A writing by Saul Bellow

I came across this quote today. It puts into perspective something I have been struggling with since my son died three years ago. 


"I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. 
Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? 
A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me.

 I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away." 
— Saul Bellow