I love you,
Harry
Rosalie Van Antwerp
33 Orange Lane
Goshen, CT 06756
USA
February 8, 2020
Dear Rosalie,
Thinking of you, as I always am. Spending the mornings walking with the dogs and afternoons in the garden listening to the wind and smelling the fresh highland air. My view of the river on Farney Road, which felt grand, was so slim. You have to see the loch to believe it. Fiona and Walt and the children, you know, were here two wonderful weeks over the holidays. Bruce and his lot are coming in April, then Stewart and Felix in June. Everyone wants a turn! I am happy. Hattie and I sit and tell stories in the evenings, and sometimes Douggie, Declan, and John come and we all sit talking about the past. We have so much to learn about one another. They love Theodore. Theodore read me the letter from January 20 and I’m grieved to hear of Lars’s decline. It was the right thing putting him in Greenmont. You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic. I miss you. Back in late April, and Theodore will accompany me for a visit. You’re the only person left who writes, and I’m grateful.
Love,
Sybil in Scotland
Regards from Scotland,
Theodore
Hattie Gleason
Bodney Cottage
Fassfern
Fort William
PH33 7NP
Scotland
UNITED KINGDOM
November 10, 2021
Dearest Hattie,
It is with a heavy spirit I write in order to tell you that your sister, Sybil, passed away on Tuesday morning, what would have been her son Gilbert’s fifty-seventh birthday. The doctors say she almost certainly died instantly when she suffered a pulmonary embolism. I am sorry to be the one to send this news, but the children asked me if I would.
You might wonder the details, as I would. She was fixing a cup of tea in the kitchen and I had walked down to the other house to tend the roses. When I returned after about thirty minutes, she was at her writing desk, the tea cold, her head lying on the desk as if she’d been ready to begin writing the way she used to.
Fiona and Bruce will go through Sybil’s things in due course, and we will send along certain items you might like to have. The funeral services will take place two weeks from today at the church where Sybil was a member, Church of the Good Shepherd, Annapolis, in the event you would like to attempt attendance.
I am terribly sorry, Hattie, to deliver this devastating news as well as for my failure to be there at the final moment. I am grateful we were able to spend so much time with you in Scotland, and I am heartbroken that I didn’t get more time with our Sybil (I am certain you will feel the same). It pains me to think of her alone,possibly afraid, and yet perhaps it is as she would have wanted. Her life, she said to me only very recently, had become so full these last few years, and yet I know that from certain things, now she is free.
I hope to see you again. Your friend,
Theodore
p.s. I am enclosing a photograph of you all at the pub. Fiona took it the last time she was there.
Mr. Dezi Martinelli
