Little Rowan Torrez was only 7 years old when his dad, Joseph Torrez, a commander in the Navy, died in 2013. Rowan didn’t get the chance to say a final goodbye before his dad died, but he received an unexpected message in the mail from his father, almost eight years after it was written.

Joseph Torrez died of a rare brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, at age 41, The Huffington Post reported.

Before his death, Torrez had sent his son, Rowan, postcards from different states he traveled through during a road trip. Last Saturday, the 9-year-old received one of them in the mail, postmarked June 10, 2007, and arriving days before the anniversary of Torrez’s death. The postcard read:

“Hello from Pennsylvania! I love you and I miss you so much. See you soon. Love, Daddy.

Torrez loved his son so much he made the difficult decision to leave his family in Littleton, Colorado, to join the Navy while earning two masters degrees from MIT, all in order to better provide for them.

Rowan, now 9, remembers always visiting his dad in exotic locations while he was stationed in the Navy. “He would see him as much as he could,” Rowan’s mother said.

“Rowan was always going somewhere fun to see him. We went to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and California to visit him. His dad was all good times, and that’s a really good thing for him to have now,” she added.

It’s amazing how this postcard arrived almost eight years after it was sent, but regardless, Rowan told reporters that “he will treasure his father’s words.”

“It’s like a keepsake,” he said. “I’d say, ‘Thank you.”’ This postcard is just a continuation of those good times.

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