A Valedictory Gift.

I have just received a letter from Coeur d'Alene Idaho, from my recent landlady. She has mailed me a check for around 2/3 of the deposit I put down on the beautiful apartment I loved and inhabited for 9 months. But this is not what the woman, Beatrice, has given me.

She signs her brief note, "As Ever, Bea". This valediction is her gift: whatever sentiment manages to be expressed in signing a letter "As Ever", something simple and quotidian, verging on tedium--maybe the sentiment of not working to express any particular sentiment. This valediction is a small stroke that, by its mere statement of fact, will serve me as an available ornament to adorn otherwise meaningful or important or good letters, imbuing them with a faint sense of hollowness, at least for myself; this is the wonderful, lifelong gift Beatrice has given me.

As Ever,
Jonathan