Thursday June 5

[no entry]

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These silences from Papa, even when they just go on for two days, feel epic. He has seesawed for several weeks between despair and resolve in the aftermath of his father's death, looked for ways to exorcise the specter of pessimism with his own idealism. Yet the last thing he wrote about was sending money home to pay for his father's tombstone. Did the finality of that gesture overwhelm his inherent optimism and temporarily shut down his ability to share his thoughts?

Even though I know the steady, satisfied person he was to become, I still worry when he stops writing, and wish I could say to him "Papa, this is you":