I love my wife. My wife is dead.
D'Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that, but I don't only write it because you like it. I write it
because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you, almost two years but I know you'll excuse
me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to
writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do so what I have delayed in doing, and that I
have done so much in the past.
I want to tell you that I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead, but I still
want to comfort and take care of you, and I want you to love me and care for me.
I want to have problems to discuss with you. I want to do little projects with you.
I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do.
We started to learn to make clothes together, or learn Chinese, or getting a movie projector.
Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the idea-woman and general
instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and
thought I needed.
You needn't have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so
many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true, you can give me nothing now yet I love you
so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else, but I want you to stand there.
You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't
want to be in my way.
I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two
years.
But you can't help it, darling, nor can I. I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very
nice ones and I don't want to remain alone, but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes.
You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
Please excuse my not mailing this, but I don't know your new address.