Dear Dr. Walker

Witt and I took some time to go through your papers and we found stacks of letters that you had written to Woody and Leslie. Witt declared them love letters, and I stuffed them into sacks and they're outside now in the cold November air. It seems lonely that all of your words would be stuffed into sacks, and shoved into the cold, but when I read the occasional paragraph I was struck by how detailed and beautiful your words were to these men that we never spoke about.

Immediately I felt as though I was invading your privacy, but I was also entranced by these drafts and drafts of love letters or these letters that you never sent. Letters that you wrote about hiking and Franconia College and having a couple over to dinner. We even found an old photo of you--Witt said it was professionally made, and you must have been thirty or even forty. I imagine you were about my age now, but you had already lived a lifetime. A terrible world of hurt, losing your daughter, surviving a first husband.

Remember when I brought you Thanksgiving dinner? And you ate and we sat in your room and talked about dinner. And we must have talked about other things, but I don't remember. I remember what. I have flashes of you--in class, in the hospital, in the nursing homes.

Your letters reminded me today that being with someone at the end gives no true indication of beginning. It makes me afraid to have children.