Shut My Mouth

I've been trying all day to think  how people work their way back toward cheeriness when they’ve got the blues. Some drink I suppose, some gamble, some collect dolls - there's a serious chunk of the population addicted to doll-collecting not sure you knew that - and some just lie flat down and spend hours staring at whatever’s in front of them.I tried that last night in front of “Parenthood,” the NBC show with the lovably flawed Craig T. Nelson character and the star-crossed Lauren Graham character  getting kissed by the wrong guy all the time. (She’s pretty adorable herself; who wouldn’t want to kiss her? Except her kids, the short seething girl with too much eye makeup and the mute yet sensitive boy.)  But even this sprightly show could not  restore my joy. I was just lower than the underbelly of a snake. I lacked the energy to even click it off -  had to ask David to do it for me.  “You can’ pick up the remote now? " he said, momentarily  distracted from his own addiction to the Stieg Larsson novels.“I know! Put me out of my misery!”  I mewed and so he clicked it off and I turned on to my tummy and went to sleep. (And yes I know you’re not supposed to have TV in your bedroom. I know I just wrote all that about how even an alarm clock is too bright to be around when you’re even thinking about sleep. I will  only say that the day we went ahead and got one anyway  WAS ONE OF THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF MY LIFE, OK?)And then I went to the Post Office and got this letter written by someone in response to what might have  struck her as an exceedingly optimistic column of mine. It is just so sad; it makes me feel like the proverbial man who cried because he had no shoes until he met a man who had no feet.How to respond to a letter like this?  The poor soul just ends it here, without even a  signature. What can I possibly say to her?