NOT SENT

Dear Alex,

Thank you for your telephone call yesterday afternoon, which, like
cerebral tinnitus, continues to echo in my mind. I hope you will not
be annoyed by an accounting which I admit to be primarily directed to
myself as part of my ongoing project of trying to put my ideas and 
sentiments in order, a last ditch effort to stave off confusion.

We agreed, if I remember correctly, to refrain from "complaining" to
each other. It's not an agreement which I wish to rescind; but I 
can't avoid asking myself what it means, especially in the light 
of the final years of my marriage when love and sympathy fused and 
became indistinguishable.

As usual, I think about "complaining" in terms of language. In English 
we distinguish between complaint and lamentation, which are in German 
comprised in the single word, Klage. Perhaps it's making a spurious 
distinction to suggest that a complaint expresses unhappiness as it 
affects the individual, whereas lamentation addresses the misfortune 
of a society. I am reminded of Jeremiah's lamentations over the fate 
of Jerusalem; and of Job's complaints of God's unjust justice that had 
befallen him.

When Margaret and I were courting, she frequently (and critically)
alluded to her propensity for complaining; she confided that she once 
rubbed a thermometer to make it appears that she was ill, where what 
she wanted was not illness, but attention and care. In her old age she 
reverted to the childishness of childhood. As for myself, far from being 
critical, I welcomed her complaining as an indication that she needed me 
and wanted me to care for her.

Now, that I am aging alone, I have no cause to complain. As I have
said on various occasions, I am grateful to have been in a position
to take care of Margaret during the last 66 years of her life. What
more could I have wanted?

Itzhak Perlman