CHAPTER SEVEN

Here is a follow up to the previous post. It may cast some understanding of my true love. This is a letter written to Betty about three week before my first heart attack.

11/2/57
Dearest One:
How can time, which flies so fast in other areas of life, go so slowly when I anticipate your return? Why is it that each days tomorrow is so slow in fading into this petty pace from day to day? Why is it that when the heart longs its satisfaction is found only in the sensual pleasure of holding your loved one in your arms and feeling the soft caresses of her lips? Why is it that a house which seems too full with the children suddenly takes on the aspects of a cavernous tomb when they are away?
I love you, I long for you, I desire you-- hurry, O wings, and bear her home to me! Hurry, O flight, and span the space and time that we who are thus apart may find our wholeness together!

The day is like my heart. The heavens cry their tears and the greyness speaks to my desolateness without you. Bear up - be brave - and yet how could I have let you go and how could I do otherwise. With hardly a letter to hold to my heart -- hearing from you only through packages - and quickening to your love I sit in longing just to hear your breath --I lie in wait for the other side of the bed to give in to you knowing that I too will then hold you in my arms.

News? What news? The world has come to a virtual stand still while you are gone. Hasten, O hasten home, my love that we who are thus apart may find our wholeness together!

Love, Jim

She had returned just before the heart attack. She had suffered a miscarriage of twins in June of that year and was taking some time off from managing a family to be with her family in West Virginia. The twins, a boy and a girl did not survive and are buried in Woodville, MA.