The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

I considered going back to read all of it, this whole meandering opus, but it isn’t necessary and it would be very difficult for me at this point. I think there are very many things I’ve forgotten by now, which is for the best.

I tried the books on tape, but really cannot focus and detest the headphones and bad narrators, so not reading anything anymore, though sometimes I have Theodore read to me aloud.

Spending the mornings walking with the dogs and afternoons in the garden listening to the wind and smelling the fresh highland air. My view of the river on Farney Road, which felt grand, was so slim. You have to see the loch to believe it. Fiona and Walt and the children, you know, were here two wonderful weeks over the holidays. Bruce and his lot are coming in April, then Stewart and Felix in June. Everyone wants a turn! I am happy. Hattie and I sit and tell stories in the evenings, and sometimes Douggie, Declan, and John come and we all sit talking about the past. We have so much to learn about one another.

You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic.

I am heartbroken that I didn’t get more time with our Sybil (I am certain you will feel the same). It pains me to think of her alone, possibly afraid, and yet perhaps it is as she would have wanted. Her life, she said to me only very recently, had become so full these last few years, and yet I know that from certain things, now she is free.

I’m sorry you are dying with cancer—it makes it more insidious, somehow, even though it’s all a wash in the end. But cancer rather makes dying a more ravaging sort of experience you have to endure—I’d much prefer to be surprised, hit by a car struck dead by lightning or decapitated (swift; lights off; horrific, but not agonizing) and yet most of us won’t have the luxury.

I have hated myself, and that was what it was You loved me

I do not see a way I could have gutted out the long, difficult years if I had not had my husband, Mark, by my side—my partner in the truest sense, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. How grateful I am to have found you. You keep the boat right. As it turns out, I got everything I wanted. Every moment of my life with you has been a kindness, and that is why this book is to you. James 1:17