June 20, 2020. Madison, Mississippi. Letters.

Ken and I moved to Texas in 1964. And we moved to Maryland in 1970. My Mother died in 1973. During that time period, my Mother and I exchanged letters. Every week I wrote a long letter to her and every week my Mother wrote me too. So our letters overlapped. But it did not matter. Our letters were not deep. They were newsy, just the kind of conversation you would have over a cup of tea if we both lived in the same city. Mother kept me up to date with friends and relatives still in Canada, including anyone who had died who she knew I would recognize. Ken called the letters "The Death Letters," because someone had always just died. We would laugh together as I was opening the envelope and wonder out loud whop had died that week. Sure enough, someone had died. I never mentioned this to my Mother nor Ken's name for her letters. She would have been hurt. She was only wanting me to stay current. I feel the same with myself. Just this week I wrote sympathy cards to three friends whose relatives have died. I feel like my Mother making a report. Gill's daughter ion law, Kate's mother died last week after several years of a battle with cancer. She was younger than me and still a working attorney but she died. And folks from the old Songster Brigade at the Danforth Corps of The Salvation Army, Ken and Sylvia, died the same evening an hour apart. They were married but both had been ailing. So more people I knew when I was young have passed away. Ken was 95 and Sylvia 86. My work friend Denise's Mother died just Friday. I did not know the mother well but had spent time with her several times over the years. She had led an extraordinary, ordinary life. In recent years, Denise and I shared reports because her mother also had Parkinson's disease. Now she too had passed on. And then my friend David died too. I have had a run. I think it is interesting that I am in my 80's when so many friends are dying but when my mother was telling me friends and relatives deaths she was in her 60s and 70s. I had forgotten that life expectancy had expanded. Fifty years ago life expectancy was 72. Not any more. This is a good thing but I did not recognize it till now, when I was writing all those sympathy notes. But enough is enough. I have received enough death notices for now.