Dear Cyndy,

This morning I finally spoke with the personnel in the
superintendent's office of the apartment house where
my sister Margrit lived. She was well known and well
liked. Her apartment was searched even while I waited
on the phone. She was found lying on the bathroom floor.
The emergency medical technicians summoned to the scene
pronounced her dead. The medical examiners deputy thought
she had been dead for several hours, since rigor mortis
had set in, but not several days, since the rigor had
not faded and the body was not decomposed. There was
no evidence of trauma.

It's been a hectic day, negotiating with the Wayne County
Medical Examiner, the Cremation Society of Michigan,
the superintendent of Margrit's apartment house, and
spending what must have added up to several hours in
telephone conversations consoling Margrit's various friends.

My own feelings run so deep that I cannot fathom them,
at least not now or not yet. Each one of us is destined
to his or her own death.  My father's death spanned
three long months during which he lay in bed paralysed
with Parkinsons Disease while his mind recapitulated
the struggles and the agonies of his childhood. My
mother's body outlived her mind for two and a half
years, during which her recognition even of her children
was only perfunctory. On more than one occasion she
thought it was time for her to take the train to Berlin.

Margrit's death was probably the quickest and least
painful of them all. Although the Wayne County Medical
Examiner hasn't yet ventured a diagnosis, - I told him
I had no need for an exploratory autopsy, but that as an
ex-medical examiner myself, I respected his obligation
to what he deemed proper, - my conclusion is that Margrit
died of acute massive pulmonary embolism, in consequence 
of just such risk-taking as I had often discussed with her.

My interpretation is that the return flight from
Ft Lauderdale to Detroit which requires as much as 7 hours,
even without delays, was much protracted by the winter
storms on December 19.  It's likely that Margrit slept
much if not most of the time, keeping her legs even more
immobile than they would otherwise have been. Perhaps
most adverse of all, since Margrit had requested a
wheel chair on the flight from Boston to TriCities,
she quite likely also requested a wheel chairs provided
for her on the flight to Detroit when she changed planes
in Chicago or Baltimore, thus avoiding  even the limited
exercise of walking from one plane to the next. A recent
study found that the rate of pulmonary embolism from deep
venous thrombosis is for a matter of weeks as much as 70
times as great in post-operative patients as in persons
who have not recently been operated on. Schiller's verse 
came true: 

Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein, 
nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein!

And if you don't choose to wager your life,
You'll not be rewarded with life as your prize.

I hope you and Ned are well, and stay away
from the airlines.
 
Jochen