Richard Feynman to Arline - Read by Oscar Isaac

Letters Live
114 followers
3 Video Views·Jan 13, 2023
Darlene, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear that,
but I don't only write it because you like it, I write it because it makes me warm all over inside
to write it to you. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you, almost two years,
but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am stubborn and realistic,
and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know, my darling wife, that it is right to
do so, what I have delayed in doing and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell
you that I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you. I find it hard to understand in my
mind what it means to love you after you are dead, but I still want to comfort and take care
of you, and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you.
I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that.
What should we do? We started to learn to make clothes together, or learn Chinese,
or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you,
and you were the idea woman and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick, you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to
and thought I needed. You needn't have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need,
because I loved you in so many ways, so much, and now it is clearly even more true.
You can give me nothing now, yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else,
but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive. I know you
will assure me that I am foolish, and that you want me to have full happiness, and don't want
to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend, except you,
sweetheart. After two years, you can't help it, darling, nor can I. I don't understand it,
for I have met many girls, and very nice ones, and I don't want to remain alone,
but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Rich. P.S.
Please excuse my not mailing this, but I don't know your new address.
