Cirrus@Austlit

'Dear Annie,

'This is too hard. I've written sonnets and songs and speeches to you, but this is too hard. In forty-four years I've not thought of this letter to you, the sort you write before the euthanasia drug kicks in, and it's too hard. On my mind are the ghosts of the children miscarried and the faces of those that survived. We should have started sooner, but then we would never have had the ones we know, just others with their names. But more, but more, for sure. The six or eight we thought of. How incorrect we were. A bigger Christmas dinner. More daughter dramas. More music round the table.'   (Introduction)