He wrote to a woman who had been dead sixteen months
In October 1946 Richard Feynman wrote a love letter to his wife, Arline. She had been dead sixteen months. He sealed it and never sent it.
He opens by telling her why he is writing at all: saying “I adore you” makes him warm, not only because she likes to hear it. Half the letter is already for him.
Then the line that gives it away. “I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead.” He knows she can give him nothing, and says so out loud. He tells her she stands in his way of loving anyone else, and wants her to stay there.
Read from her side, it is not a love letter. It is a man asking a dead woman to hold a place she cannot hold: to love him, to make clothes with him, to plan one more adventure. There is nobody on the other end. He is the one who needs to hear it.
He never mailed it. The last line says why. “Please excuse my not mailing this, but I don't know your new address.”
Some messages are not for the person they are addressed to. That is why they stay sealed.
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