happy ending

Orson Welles said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

I kept reading Eero and Aline Saarinen’s correspondence and eventually got to Aline’s letters to Eero after they had been married for about 7 years. I was a little obsessed for a couple days... I've been thinking about marriage...

Eero and Aline married later in life by 50's standards, she was in her late 30's, he in his early 40's. They both had been married and had children before (Eero was still married to his first wife when they met), but they went on to have a wonderful professional partnership, an intimate, loving marriage, and a son of their own.  


They often traveled separately doing their own work and promoting his. Aline was a journalist, author and architecture critic with an impressive career in any era, but even more so as a woman in the 1950's and 60's. And his fame is, in large part, due to her work on his behalf both before and after his death.


But after they'd been married for awhile, according to Aline, Eero didn’t write letters (or postcards, or even cables) anymore...

But Aline wrote.  In one letter she told him about their young son and the goings on at their practice.  She let him know of the sudden passing of a 56 year old friend and begged him to take care of himself.  She wondered how his work was being received and whether or not he'd gotten the runs on his trip.  And she ended that letter saying that she missed him and loved him even if he had forgotten her. 

And here’s the part that killed me… 3 months after she sent him that sweet ordinary letter teasing, not complaining, about being taken for granted, at the age of 51, Eero died. 
 
Holy hell, that's depressing. Tomorrow, much cheerier things.