Thanks Chicory: I feel very much alone. My wife does not have a drinking problem but increasingly, over the past four years we have drifted apart. I will never leave her but it saddens me to think of the old times, Brooklyn Heights where we had two animals, a cat and a dog, our first trip abroad on the old Queen Mary in 1957, France (Paris and Vezelay), Switzerland and Zermatt, Florence, Assisi and Rome. Our honeymoon in Quebec (France on the cheap), where we bought the "Hair of the Mo" England, the Lake Country, Ullapool. Yorkminster and Durham with its old Norman Cathedral. This was the woman I loved and she loved me, despite my periodic drinking. This I must remember. I must live long enough to survive her and the dog. After that I am content if my mission may be over. Not suicide. Just "Welcome Sister Death" And I hope that my work may be done. To try to make up for all and heartache I caused my family for forty years. My true love (in addition to my cousin whose portrait is by my bed, who died at 19), is in the poetry, prose and magnificence of the English in the 18th and early Nineteenth Century. I have built up a collection as a memorial to her. As for my mother, with whom I ended up with a seven year bitter and hostile relationship (growing dementia), we must respect and forgive the dead. May they rest in peace. And so may it be for us all. Let hope that by the Grace of God it may be so.
Fondly, Bill