Sunday Evening Nov 24 - 1957 Today is Aunt Bess' 82nd birthday My dear Eleanor: Thanks indeed for that very informative letter just received day before yesterday. Your fathers passing was really quite sudden but no doubt Providential for he had suffered a great deal during these last years -- yet cheerful to the end: and had eaten a fairly good dinner, after which going to sleep from which he never wakened. Let us be thankful for that Eleanor dear, for he is now free. Only last May when Uncle Jim and I were down to see him, he cheerfully brought out a bottle of Haig and Haig and we three had a nip together. Now by the way if you should be speaking to Uncle Jim about that, dont mention the whiskey in Marys presence for she seems fanatical on the topic of intoxicants. I cant think any of the family were trying to keep anything from you. Truly I had hope of seeing him again, for when Uncle Jim and I were with him he seemed quite normal except that one of the men in a cot only some twenty feet away from your father -- kept hollering at him so that seemed slightly to irritate him. Uremic poisoning could easily be a development from his long bedfast condition. I am glad that near the end when he addressed Ron as Tom, he might have been thinking of me, for we always were pretty close to each other. The day he passed on I was up in Sedro Woolley visiting Aunt Bess, so that was how Ron was unable to reach me by phone. He finally reached Robert and when I got back in the house about 8 o'clock that evening I got Roberts call even before I had taken off my hat and coat. Yes Eleanor, let us hang on to the thought or hope that little time elapses between the laying down of the fleshly body and the inhabiting of a new intelligent spiritual one, which of course not knowing we cant describe. So I hope he has met *Your Mother* and Evalyn and maybe Aunt Flo by this time in a wonderfully joyful re-union. Not only those but many others. As regards my leaving Roberts employ end of the year -- nothing more has been said by either of us on the subject, but his manner seems to be more filial than he has usually shown, and I am to eat Thanksgiving dinner at their house. Possibly they may bring up the subject again but I wont, so if any change to keep me on should take place, it will be from him. Of course while I was visiting Aunt Bess the day your father passed, I didnt know of it and have not been up since but writing would be of no use, and I am inclined to think on my next visit there it would do no good to mention it. I'm right glad you are feeling well again Eleanor, for you are a fine niece and we seem to have considerable in common Very affectionately Uncle Tom If convenient try and phone Uncle Jim frequently for he is sure to make some crack in his own dry humorous way that will make you laugh He's a good scout and I love him [on a separate piece of paper] My house Eleanor is only some six blocks away from that big cave in but not in any danger #