Meghan Daum

Hey, I'm going to pull it out here.

A letter that your grandfather wrote.

In 1969.

Obviously, Izzy was quite ill.

And it does have this quality of just... It's one of the most beautifully written things I've ever read.

He spends, I should say, most of this thing, he starts off, this is to his students, right?

Dear friends, he says, I've asked Donald Davis, who I would assume is one of his students.

Co-workers, okay.

To read this to you, it's intended to tell you as much as I know about my present situation and thereby, of course, to let you know what the prospects are for the future of the work we've begun together.

In planning this letter in my mind, I've been pulled this way and that by very conflicting impulses.

I prefer to consider any of my own sickness, any deep trouble, as a very personal matter, possibly to be shared with close members of our family, but never to be inflicted on anyone else.

At the same time, I detest mysteries, and those of you who have called have, I hope, been told the truth insofar as we knew it.

but the truth has been shifting, sometimes very swiftly.

And what you may have heard a few weeks back is now untrue.

And then he has this really pretty paragraph.

He says, besides, though some of you are relatively recent friends, some of our common ties go years back.

And old friends are new.

The depth of my feeling for you obliges me to be entirely honest with you.

And so I'm going to put the next several paragraphs in parentheses, and I'm asking Donald not to read them aloud.

Each of you who wishes to can read it for himself.