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140

Thursday, May [[strikethrough]] 19 [[/strikethrough]] 31, 19 [[strikethrough]] 28 [[/strikethrough]]30

Sometime this afternoon Bob will be operated on — and here am I.  It isn't the danger of it, operations now aren't really dangerous, but it's the unpleasantness and pain of it all that I hate to think of when I am so totally helpless.  Too, I have a very selfish reason for hating him to be operated.  Hospitals do make one live an unreal, removed life — and get disgusted with the people and things one knows.  I like Bob so terribly much that losing all this would really be sad.  Will the hospital make a change — I rather hope not, and rather think not.  These last few days have been glorious... well seeing him yesterday at the hospital when we decided we had come to a "state of indecision because of an incision".  Soon, perhaps, I will see Bob again, living mutely in bed, bereft of his marvelous zest for life, still, I hope, as curiously tender and loving.  Before I go to Europe I hope he'll be himself again.  What is he?  A fine person, with keen feelings and appreciation, with a joy for living, with much balance, with tenderness, with a sense of humor.  A person who likes dreams and fantasy and memories, but who, because he is balanced, can see the beauty of stark Reality.  He is a wonderful person, and I am happy for this easy friendship, in which most things seem to turn out well.  I don't know why I deserve them, but since they have come, I am extremely deeply thankful, and want most awfully to do things which will make me worthy of the grand life I have had thus far, and things so that I will not be greedy when I ask for more.


141

Sunday, [[strikethrough]] May 19 [[/strikethrough]] June 1, 19 [[strikethrough]] 28 [/strikethrough]] 30

Mrs. Jacobs and Jane have been sweet about letting me know Bob's condition, but words over the phone are frightfully unsatisfactory things.   "He is feeling as well as we can expect!"  How can one person say how another feels — how can he say himself?  He must be in pain, — but how can "we" tell if it's bad pain or not.  Emotions cannot be assumed — it is only when one is experiencing an emotion that he is filled with it, but he can never measure it.  But I am anxious to see Bob again...  Mother seems to think I will be missing him all summer — I wonder if I shall.  Oh I want to like Bob this way for ages —

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