When I said to you the other day on the phone that you are constantly in my thoughts – and you are, you are – you replied “I'm not worth it.” Now those words keep ringing in my head. I keep wondering: Does he feel that way because [in Yeats's phrase] he's fastened to a dying animal? Does he feel that way because he is withdrawing from life, the better to leave it? If so, writing this letter may be a cruel thing to do. I don't know; I truly don't; and I don't have you, whom I would turn to for advice if it were anyone else, to consult. And so I am taking the risk, all on my own, of saying this to you while I still have the chance: Worth it?? Knowing you all these years has been for me so great a privilege that I am now torn between gratitude at having been granted such a friendship and self-pity at being untimely robbed of so much joy, so much delight, so much light, so much laughter, so much wit, so much fun, so much comfort, so much love. Ich habe nicht genug von Wheldon.