Dearest father

The years are blowing through my life like dead leaves. How many do we
have left? Nobody seems to know. We keep learning of new problems: I’m
starting to wonder how we ever managed to live in the first place.
Genetics seems to be the science of all the broken genes assembling
into a half-working organic mess that just survives long enough to
bear children. We’re past the childbearing age and the grim reaper
seems to have taken notice. Our cells don’t take well to the radiation
out here. One would think that so far away from the sun we’d be safe,
but the lack of magnetic fields to shield us, and the radioactive
metals buried in the moons we mine both contribute to low level
exposure. Yesterday we read up on malfunctioning thyroid glands. Does
this never end. And then I think of you. Happy on those pictures,
white haired, gaunt, on some cliff face, climbing iron ladders, so far
away. I remember happier times, wind in our faces, rocks beneath our
hands. Why did we not see each other every year? What excuses did we
make?

Uh.

I don’t know why I am writing this.

Into the trash it goes.