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Dear father and mother
1935-
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ft 'Since receiving your letter yesterday I
heave "been able to think of little else. How I wish I could know
Just how you are today; or better still, if I could Just run in
to see you.  Last week a letter from Aunt Iva said,
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must tell you I feel sure your mother13 days are numbered, and
your father's eyes are terrible...My heart aches for them. 1
invited them to.be my guest-s for a few weeks, but they refused.
Ifm sorry to give such heart breaking information but tho't you
should know. I guess^there is no question of your mother's ailment
being a cancer, and she is changing so fast."
'I "■•'•  - This somewhat prepared me for this letter.
I just prfety that mother will be spared much suffering. For her,
leaving this world would only' be gain.i' As Paul said, To me to
live1 is Christ, and to die is gain.  It is us who are left to whom
the loss comes. When I said goodbye at the station in Los Angeles
a little over seven months ago, I looked at you two standing there
smiling bravely, and of course could not help but wonder if you
would be there to meet me another time.  I really hoped you would
be, and felt it was altogether possible. No one would ever have
thought then that within so short a time we should come to these
experiences. M f I
1 ; I try not to let myself think too much of
what I cannot help, but before half past'two last^night I awoke
and doz.ed only a little now and'then after that, thinking constantly
of you and dreaming.  I heard motherfs happy voice and felt her
warm embrace just as real as if I were
final farewell, but all was bright and
pain.  After a little I looked out the
ice ereatfi, and realized that you were preparing a surprise dinner
for me as our last one together.  Then I awoke again.
there.  I had come for a
cheerful, no tears and no
window and saw father freezing
■  The family here have been very tender with
me. Han moksa gently reminded me that everything was in God's f
hands,* and "he last thing last night he said, "Unless God performs
a miracle—*'.  In the night "mylthoughts ran clear back to the
story of grandpa Maupin's falling into the river through the hole
in the ice when he was a boy and dame on down to our trips the past
two years, to our visit to Plymouth, and Princeton, the little
library in Trenton, Mt. Vernon, and then to scenes in Yellowstone
and the ranch on the Snake River. Then I thought of the lovely
vistas of peacefulness all about Bonnivue.  It would seem almost
like desecration for it to be in strangers' hands. What of the
ferns and begonias, the de'sert bed, and the fruit trees, and|ofe
so many things!
You spoke of mother smiling a3 she waved
"us*1 a goodbye.  I wondered who else was there; the doctor, or oxd
friends? xlt was Sunday afternoon, but you did not speak of having
been at church in the morning.  I guessed your eyes were too bad.
You did not 3ay anything about yourself, but I wondered if it was
not difficult for you -to write.  I have wondered if you still had
the telephone connected.  If I remember correctly, mother went^
to the hospital the first time on Uonday, and I have wondered if