Sept 7, 1946[1]
Dear Robert[2] –
I hardly
know how to answer you letter. I do not believe that you should feel that you
should come home immediately; However, I hope you can spend at least part of your
leave with Mama. From the very little I know of the medical aspects of her case
I judge there is no immediate danger. Mostly I have been judging her by the
continuous loss of weight and increasing stiffness. Dr. Downing has not
expressed a definite opinion to my hearing and we all realize that the medical
world is still stumped by arthritis. Do you realize the spot I’m in? I don’t
want to spread alarms and yet I don’t want to give you any false hopes.
Perhaps I can
give you a picture of Mama’s change and you can draw your own conclusions. Just
before Mama went to the Hot Springs four weeks ago she was staying alone ,
fixing some of her meals, taking her own shower and in general we felt she was
rather happy to by herself for short times (ie we tried to see that someone of
us dropped by during the day, cleaned the house etc). Now she could not
possibly manage to fix her meals take a shower, etc.
Naturally,
Mama gets discouraged and it does give her a mental lift to have her chicks[3]
arrive. If for no other reason than that it would be wonderful if you could
visit her.
You sound
about as unsettled as some of the rest of us. I hope you get your fondest wish
as to your next move.
Paul talks
of moving to Idaho .
He had me convinces we are going to move this summer, but here it’s almost time
for school to begin and we have made no decision yet.
Cornelia is
surely have (sic) a bad siege. I visited her Thursday and she hoped to be able
to be up and at it in three weeks or so. She had no assurance that it would be
that long a time or that short.
This
certainly seems like a bad year for the Richerts.
I close
this gloomy letter with the sincere hope that my next letter written be full of
glad tidings.
Love,
Sunday a.m.[5]
As to the
weather: It has been delightful for the past two weeks. The daytime
temperatures have been in the 80’s to low 90’s bracket. The nights are on the
chilly side – wool blankets are in use. However, it is not outside the realm of
possibility that we will have some warmer weather in the next few weeks. We’ve
had enough hot weather this year – it came all in one dose starting early in
July and lasting nearly all of August. Will walk to the mail box now.
E.R.
[1]
Postmarked Sep 8, 19946
[2]
Addressed to: Lt. Robert B. Richert, P.O.
Box 240Kearns , Utah
[3] In
context of the letter and paragraph, “chicks” is surely being used in reference
to her children. But it should be noted that chickens were raised at her home
and in other letters the literal meaning is correct.
[5] Sunday
was the 8th of September in 1946. Also, the following note was
enclosed with the 7 Sep letter on a smaller piece of stationery.
No comments:
Post a Comment