(This’ll make real man cry)
Chris Williamson reads Richard Feynman‘s love letter out loud on this YouTube Short video.
I’ve listened to it a dozen times. Here’s the full letter.
October 17, 1946
D’Arline, I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that, but I don’t only write it because you like it, I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote you, almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead , but I still want to comfort and take care of you, and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you, I want to do little projects with you.
I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do? We started to learn to make clothes together, or learn Chinese, or getting a movie projector.
Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and the general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something you wanted to and thought I needed.
You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then, there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much.
And now it is clearly even more true, you can give me nothing now, yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else, but I want you to stand there.
You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I, I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone, but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes.
You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Richard P. Feynman
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