The Hidden Note on the Wall
Updated: Sep 8
“But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”Matthew 10:30
While they were renovating their kitchen, John and Margaret found a scrap of plaster behind an old cupboard. On it, in the handwriting of their son Christopher at fourteen, were the words: “This is original wallpaper. Friday 4:15, 8th December 1989. Please leave this wallpaper. Chris.”
Christopher had died of cancer at thirty-five. When they tried to save the plaster, it crumbled. Later the fragments were carefully joined again. Margaret could barely speak. “He would be chuffed to bits,” she said.
A fourteen-year-old wrote a note for a future he could not see. Years later his parents found it, after they had already lost him. The writing did not bring him back. It told them something they needed: he had been there. He had cared about the house. He had left a word for them.
Jesus said that God numbers even the hairs of our head. Nothing about a person is too small for him to know. A sentence on a wall, a date, a time of day: these are not nothing. Love leaves marks. God does not lose them, even when the plaster breaks.
At Mass we speak the names of the dead. We trust that God still holds what we cannot hold. We do not have to keep every object. We do need to remember that a life spoken in love is not erased.
Some messages wait a long time to be read. When they appear again, they say what the heart already knew and needed to hear once more: you were loved. God keeps that word. On the last day, nothing true will stay buried.