_                                 174 School Street
_                           Belmont, Massachusetts 02478
_
_                                   617-484-8109
_                             ernstmeyer@earthlink.net
_
_
_           March 11, 2011
_
_
_           Dear Jane,
_
_                Thank you for your postcard telling me about your trip
_           to Peru.  What you wrote to me has since been much on my
_           mind, but I haven't quite known how to answer. I often think
_           of the months I spent with your family, with you and Peter
_           and Ellen, and your parents, especially when, as regularly
_           occurs, on our way to Virginia, we drive across
_           Massachusetts, south of Amherst and into New York State past
_           Canaan. Of course, it's just as well that sentimental
_           musings can't recapture the past. We contemplate it to
_           assure and reassure ourselves that we have survived.
_
_                Cyndy, who as you may or may not know, has stayed in
_           touch with me by e-mail, has hinted to me at the changes
_           occurring in your life.  I hope and I wish for you not only
_           that your confidence and equanimity will not fail you, but
_           that surviving and surmounting the difficulties of aging can
_           become a celebration of your life, an ornament integral to
_           your existence.
_
_                I myself experience in these declining months and years
_           a gradual but undeniable disintegration of my world and of
_           myself, a metamorphosis which far from deploring I want very
_           much to embrace and to welcome. To what extent I succeed,
_           remains to be seen.
_
_                For years now, I have contemplated my relationships to
_           my family, to my friends and acquaintances, and not least to
_           my patients as opportunities to cooperate to mutual
_           advantage in the projects that adorn life and make it
_           meaningful. But I have learned that no matter how great the
_           love and how deep the yearning, the isolation and the
_           loneliness of our lives will not be dispelled.
_
_                Thank you again for your postcard.
_
_                                                          Jochen