When Richard was coming out of the hospital in February, a friend in his eighties had just gone in and as we waited for the obligatory wheelchair attendant at checkout, we debated asking them to push us briefly to George’s room–but didn’t because we knew it wasn’t a fair thing to ask them to add to their schedule while other patients waited.

That was the right thing to do, but I will always be a little wistful over it.

He never recovered from his pulmonary embolism. I asked if I could visit. Was he lucid?

Karen gently let me know it was time for the innermost ring to be the ones present.

She and their children, who came in from all over, kept him company nonstop all these weeks. They assumed George could hear them but past that they really couldn’t say for sure. Hospice got set up at home. They had a big family, there were lots of grandchildren, and every one of them got a chance to tell him they loved him. I can just picture their son who plays in a blues band strumming away softly at his dad’s bedside and his dad wanting to pick up his guitar to play along.

She knew she was going to be a widow.

That doesn’t make it any easier.

It was good to see people hugging her again and again and again and again and again at church after they announced his passing. Everybody wanted to be there for her every second.

Just like she had been for him.