From World Radio, this is Double Take. I'm Les Silers.

Today we have something a little different. It's a series of letters I wrote to my father last year.

I never sent them. I don't think I could.

Some of these things I've told him in person, others will just have to wait for another time, another place.

And there, maybe, some of these things won't need to be said.

Also in these letters, you'll hear me mention my wife, Jennifer, and my sister, Arevella.

Thank you. October 2, 2023. Dear Dad, I tried to call you yesterday, but you didn't pick up.

You always picked up when you and mom were living in the duplex. If you didn't,

I'd get worried. Call Arvella. But after you moved into that senior's facility, it's been hard to get

a hold of you. I'm glad Arvella arranged to put in the landline, but I don't know if you can't hear

the ringer or you're sleeping when I call or what? You don't answer. So I've decided to

start writing to you. Not that you'll be able to read this. I know. It's been hard to concentrate

the last few years. It used to read all the time. You were always reading something, often a western

Max Brand or Louis Lemur, sometimes those spy stories by Alastair McLean.

You liked Mark Twain a lot.

Once I watched you reading, roughing it while sitting in your rocker by the living room window on the acreage.

Every so often you'd stop and chuckle.

You read me a passage about a bull supposedly trying to climb a tree, and then you laughed and laughed.

I think I laughed because you were laughing.

I was maybe eight at the time.

I still love Mark Twain.

And I still remember that passage and how you shared it with me.

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