Dear Georgette,

Klemens joins me in thanking you for letting us know
about your father's recent death.

I have vivid memories of a summer's day some fifty years ago.
Margrit was visiting us at the somewhat dilapidated
manorial residence on "the Knoll" in Damascus, Virginia
which we were renting at the time.
We were standing on the front porch, sunbeams erratically
flickering through tall oaks as they swayed in the breeze.
There, in a unique moment of intimacy, Margrit told me how
happy she was because she had finally found the man,
referring of course to your father, she would marry.

More nebulous is the memory of Margrit's visit
a few years later in Belmont with a friend
whom I assume to have been your father.
I retain an image of the visitors having arisen
from their chairs, at the point of departure,
nothing of significance having been said.

Margrit, as you know, had thought it necessary
to reject the family into which she was born
in order to establish a family of her own.
You know at first hand the extent to which
her efforts were unsuccessful.
She neither found the family she sought,
nor escaped the family of which she was both
victim and beneficiary.  As a result,
her life transpired in an existential limbo.

Sensitive or sentimental -
the choice of descriptor is yours -
as I am to the nuances of family relationships,
given my sisters decades of intimacy with your father,
I cannot but consider him, - and by extension yourself -
members of my family. I am aware of the complexities and
conundrums which my presumptions create. I must accept
and disentangle them as best I can.

I wish for you that you have been healthy and as happy 
as the exigencies of life permit. I close with a quotation
from Rilke:
"Die grossen Worte aus den Zeiten, da
Geschehen noch sichtbar war, sind nicht fuer uns.
Wer spricht von siegen? Ueberstehen ist alles."

Jochen