Eleven years ago, our friend Conway told me that one of his sons and his family had been visiting and were just going out the door for the airport to leave when his son, a doctor, looked at him and asked him what was wrong.

Conway told me he’d answered that he was fine, saying, you don’t want to miss your plane, but that his son went, No, you’re not. And over his father’s objections he’d called an ambulance and thus had saved his father’s life from that heart attack.  Conway was bursting with love, pride, and gratitude as he told me this.

A month ago.  We arrived at the Loews Hotel on Coronado Island for our son’s wedding, started to unpack, and it was time to go meet up with Kim’s family somewhere around the lobby and then head over to the rehearsal dinner.  At the foot of the grand spiral staircase, I saw a few people I didn’t know and Kim a bit away, talking to someone.  I approached a 40-something man and asked, “You must be Kim’s uncle.”  I figured he would either think I was crazy, or, I was right.

The man smiled broadly and said indeed he was.  He was Kim’s Uncle Marc, Conway’s son who is a doctor.  I liked him immediately.

His brain tumor surgery Tuesday has had complications.  We wait to hear.  I had his age and kids’  mixed with his younger brother’s, though, yesterday.

I may not know him well, but what he didn’t know when we met in May was that I have been grateful to him for eleven years for dropping everything on the spot and giving his dad a little more time on this earth for those who loved him.

And the knitting for Marc’s wife continues.  It’s what I can do.