Stephanie sent a pair of e-mail messages to Sue Steward, a good friend of Pat and Stephanie, and to Patrick’s sister Sue, on 25 Feb 2005, a couple of hours apart. Some of the content overlapped, which is easy to do with e-mail, and useful to do when cancer drains your energy.
Here is the letter to my Aunt Sue at 2:52 PM. The subject line read “Family, Health and Nature.”
Dear Sue,
What a wonderful letter you wrote to Patrick – he forwarded it to me to read.
So many positive and heartfelt and true thoughts.
I am really sorry my lower energy level is so worrying to Pat.
I am living with the anemia (I guess it comes from the kidney problems and from the hormonal treatments I am taking for the cancer) and have gotten used to wanting to take a nap after lunch (using the limited oxygen for digestion).
It is also winter and a kind of hibernation feeling takes over then.
I feel more energetic in September – a time of year I have always loved.
I do kind of huff and puff when going up stairs and up hills or hanging clothes and remember how easily I used to run around –
Patrick has been wonderful and caring and attentive and loving. He’s a dear and I am so lucky he’s my companion.
We’re finalizing the programs and publicity for this year’s XXVII Festival de Deià.
Lots of detail work using the Quark Express program which I enjoy.
Pat does the grand sweep and planning, and I concentrate on the small details and corrections and translations.
One month to go and the concerts begin. Easter is so early this year.
Fortunately too we have some Easter visitors to help with our houses expenses.
It looked pretty bleak all winter – tighten the financial belt – but suddenly reservations are picking up.
God provides again.
We float through life on trust and hope, sometimes going with the current, sometimes swimming upstream like the salmon.
Today suddenly there are icy winds from Siberia reaching even down here to the Iberian peninsula and there are snow-sleet flurries – nothing sticks down here in the valley, but it’s lovely to see the thin clouds of white making Japanese type scenery with the blooming almonds, mimosa, narcisus and other yellow flowers.
And some of the branches have ‘nunnelybones‘ – my childhood invented word for the droplets that hang on branches and reflect the world.
Suddenly the telephone is ringing constantly. Until later.
Love. Stephanie