There ensued some months of relative optimism. The cancer was eradicated, my mother's knee finally improved, and her native hopefulness returned to her letters. She reported that my father had taken first place in a game ofbridge: "With his confusion cleared up & his less conservative approach to the game he is doing remarkably well & it'sabout the only thing he enjoys (& can stay awake for!)." But my father's anxiety about his health did not abate; he had stomach pains that he was convinced were caused by cancer.Gradually, the import of the story my mother was telling me migrated from the personal and the moral toward the psychiatric. "The past six months we have lost so many friends it is very unsettling--part of Dad's nervousness & depression I'm sure," she wrote in February 1992. The letter continued: