Final

Dear Kate,

If a friend is to throw you a final birthday party, you and him knowing full well and having accepted what's to become of you, how would you feel?  How's your humor to stay good when every dish is heavily seasoned with pity, usually ten big courses for a Chinese banquet?

I don't want to say I will be that friend, for who knows which way the favor will be done?  One thing for sure though: one of us is going to write the final letter between us.

And it could have been the last one I posted over a week ago.  Why not?  I would have been satisfied if those were my final words, good as any, bad as ever.

Let me suggest to you then: instead of trying to write something profound, something meaningful, something conclusive or edifying, why not just write something final every time you write, as in writing resolutely unnecessarily, like having a birthday party before entering the hospital for the last time?  

Write for the pitiful eyes that search but could never read you, not from here to where you are going, not from now to your first birthday, not from where they want you to be to where you long to be; not for the faint of heart but for the frail of soul; not to be understood as to understand.

Write then, for the final time that shall last an eternity.

Yours, Alex