A short note to J.K. Rowling

Dear Ms. Rowling:

I have finished reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and my mood is somewhat melancholy. It is not that your final tome in Harry's epic fails to measure up to your high standards- it does in fact measure up. It's just the realization flooding me at the turning of the last page that this is it, there will be no more.  I am reminded of that long goodbye at the end of Tolkien's "Return of the King", wherein Sam Gamgee finally arrives home and says in a bittersweet way "Well, I'm back".

Nonetheless,  I would like to recognize the way you have shared the gift of your imagination with so many of us including my wife and daughters.  I am familiar with the true story of how you penned book one in an Edinburg coffee house when you were a single mother with little money.  Your determination frankly is part and parcel with Harry's- in fact I think you may be Harry in a strange way.

Your series will take its honored place on shelves next to the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, and a few others, as milestones of young adult literature. Generations yet unborn will savor them. Death, where is thy sting?  There is a kind of immortality in what you have managed to accomplish in your life so far, the kind of immortality that you refer to in your quotation from William Penn in your final book.

I wish you all the best.  There are so many wonderful life lessons in your books that I do not doubt your ability to handle fame, and to find new ways to make your mark in life.  For my own part, I can only say very simply, thank you.