Der Alte died in April. Our dear friend Rose B had a stroke on her ninety-first birthday last month; died about two weeks later. The spousette's mother, already in fragile health, went into a decline sufficiently steep that her four children (two in metro Seattle, two in California) sped to Henderson NV yesterday to see her, barely conscious. The old lady died this afternoon. It's been a tough quarter.

She and I were never close: following a conversation with her daughter on the occasion of her, the mother's, birthday in 2004, she became furious upon learning that neither of us had voted for Bush 43, and hung up. That year's birthday gift was returned unopened, and she acknowledged no contact from L for three or four years. She neither responded to our wedding invitation in 2005 nor attended the event.

However, mother and daughter mended fences in recent years (with the understanding that I was the wicked liberal Svengali who had tempted L away from honest Republicanism—anyone who'd spent more time with my wife during the previous forty years would have giggled at this scenario on at least two points) and I'm glad that she got to see her ma on that last day.

cordially,