Poignant Letter to His Departed Wife

[MartyT]

Richard Feynman’s Poignant Letter to His Departed Wife Arline: Watch Actor Oscar Isaac Read It Live Onstage

in Letters, Life| November 30th, 2016

Media vita in morte sumus, goes the medieval line of poetry that lent the English Book of Common Prayer its most memorable expression: “In the midst of life we are in death.” The remainder of the poem extrapolates a theology from this observation, something one can only take on faith. But whatever way we dress up the mystery of death, it remains ever-present and inevitable. Yet we might think of the motto as a palindrome: In the midst of death, we are in life. The dead remain with us, for as long as we live and remember them. This is also a mystery.

Even theoretical physicists must confront the presence of the departed, and few scientists—few writers—have done so with as much poignancy, directness, eloquence, and humor as Richard Feynman, in a letter to his wife Arline written over a year after she died of tuberculosis at age 25. Feynman, himself only 28 years old at the time, sealed the letter, written in 1946, until his own death in 1988. “Please excuse my not mailing this,” he wrote with bitter humor in the postscript, “but I don’t know your new address.” Even in the midst of his profound grief, Feynman’s wit sparkles. It is not a performance for us, his posthumous readers. It is simply the way he had always written—in letter after letter—to Arline.

Read on (and watch the video) here >>>

[Margm]

She was only 25, he was 28.  How can anyone on this forum explain how they feel any better than Richard Feynman did in his letter?  Thank you Marty.  In a lifetime with Billy, the words fit for me the same as if I had been 28 when I lost him.  

I did not know of this man Richard Feynman.  This was definitely a man, a complex man, a man of letters, a man of numbers, a man of awards.  You will be happy to know though, at such a young age of losing his love, that he lived a long and complex life, achievements, criticism, travel for the sake of "you better not stay here" kind of thing, go to another country till things die down.  Okay, there has to be a biography, and I will find it later.  I love being introduced to people who lived in my lifetime that my little papermill town did not know of.  

I just went to Amazon.  How did I not know of this man?  Maybe the numbers scared me away.  There are books galore on him.  Thank you for introducing me to this man of many books.  I do get turned off by numbers, but he might have had something to say beyond numbers.