From:　Lauren Elkins
Sent:　16 September 2013 4:06 p.m.
Subject:　Thank You to the Erudite Book Club

Friends of Natalie:
I am Natalie’s niece, Meredith’s oldest daughter. I was going through Natalie’s phone to transfer her pics and videos off of it and was also cleaning out her email some. That is how I have all of your emails. I am guessing, from the few emails from this group that I read, that this is her Book Club?

I heard about you all taking turns, when possible, to spend time with Natalie, especially near the end when she was hardly functioning. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Words alone are not enough to express this and I don’t know how much my family told you thank you. I never realized before how many things to try and keep track of with a funeral and yet process your grief so I hope you know that all you did is so appreciated.

It does not surprise me, one bit, that Natalie would have such amazing, caring, thoughtful and intelligent friends (gathered from the few emails I read).

Perhaps Mark Twain can say it right, since you are cultured, literate friends: “When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a reality, and not a fancy–that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”
I hope that you all find peace and comfort in Natalie’s passing, knowing that she is so happy and pain free now!
~Lauren

Natalie Ruth Reed (1957-2013)