More from Sylvia Luppert

Dear Jake,

Thank you for your emails. I, too, cannot believe that we have not spoken, at least since you were four years old. When I visited Linge in Chapel Hill, you were first in Egypt and then in Iraq. I hope we'll have the opportunity to meet again in the next few months or years. I do plan to telephone as soon as I have the chance. From your blog and emails I can see that you are as interesting and talented as your mother said you are.

I, too, was fearful for Linge's health. The last time I saw her, two years ago at Thanksgiving, she was very thin. I assumed she had simply dieted. But she insisted that she was the same size she had always been, even though she clearly wasn't. And you know, better than I, that once she asserted a fact as a fact, there was no point in pursuing one's disagreement. The last time we spoke, shortly after her birthday this summer, she sounded awful. And I knew she was depressed. I didn't know, however, how serious her situation was. For example, I didn't know she couldn't travel alone. I am so regretful that I didn't call her more often.

I am sure that even though she must have been acutely distressed about her inability to work, she would have clung to her life for your sake, and for the sake of her other children and grandchildren. She was not emotive, as you know, but I was. and am, convinced that the primary center of her life was all of you.

I thought, when I first went to your blog, the same thing you expressed. That is, she would be outwardly disdainful of the fuss over her, but would be secretly extremely pleased. Certainly as her friend, I am extremely pleased by it.

I have attached a photograph taken at my wedding. Linge came from Chapel Hill to Chicago. She was pregnant with you. On the morning of the wedding she had a pregnancy disaster. Her belly button popped out and her dress was a very light weight fabric, through which her popped out belly button showed. I'm not sure whether she even knew that such a thing could happen. I didn't. We tried taping it down with band-aids, and must have succeeded. As you can see, she was radiantly beautiful.

Sylvia

Note from Jake: This is not the full email, but I removed a very little of it.