Yesterday, friends and family of Isabella’s husband gathered at the unnamed university’s gardens, where Isabella’s family had spent many afternoons over the years. He knew the Latin names of plants and thought nothing of it. He was gentle and erudite, and so funny. In the hospital, he spoke to us only in Spanish, though he never said why. So there we were in the gardens on a brilliantly sunny Sunday morning, The deacon talked, the cousins remembered their childhood together in a reasonably Irish suburb of Boston, Isabella said she’d had no idea how many people loved them. Neil’s beautiful daughters gave up any pretense at composure and wiped their eyes on his sleeves. They’re all flying back to Seattle today, leaving behind a quiet that surprised me. It’s also the first rest day on the Tour de France, and to my chagrin, time passes.

This morning, Neil called to tell me his father died last night, just before midnight. Neil’s timing was perfect: I was getting ready to walk across the river to the hospital. Plans are in the works for a wake in an Irish bar and restaurant in our old hometown, and for a memorial on the grounds of the unnamed university’s gardens. Isabella is going to scatter her husband’s ashes in a public place where someone might attempt to discourage her. I volunteered to create the kind of diversion that might get me arrested while she does what she has to do. You know: because.

Our kitchen window, just before sundown.

Tonight, the nurse asked if we would like to move to a private room. Isabella, Trout, Neil, Matt, Matt’s wife, Matt’s ebullient four-year-old daughter, Matt’s mother-in-law Auntie Zee and I quit squawking and looked at each other for one long pregnant moment and started packing. Neil and Matt went down the hall to scout out what number of chairs, what pillows, what stuff we would move and what we’d leave. Neil returned with numbers. I’d already packed food, clothing linens and the bottle of booze we were hiding from the staff. When the cleaning of the new room seemed to take a long time, I scurried down the hall to see it myself. It’s a quarantine room with an outer door and an inner glass wall. It will squelch sound. It will be fabulous. I skipped back and declared it our snow globe.

On Friday morning, I brought fresh strawberries, sour cherries, blueberries and a loaf of garlicky spinach mozzarella bread to the hospital room. Sunday morning, it was grapes and Pepperidge Farm cookies. Last night, I smuggled in a bottle of Bailey’s, paper cups and my laptop full of pictures. I have an adorable grandson, and I know how to use pictures of him. Anyway, when I broke out the bottle, Isabella cheered right up. She took a few drops of it and rubbed it on her husband’s tongue, knowing that would be his wish. We then gave him a few drops of water on the sponge, which he drank even in his morphine drowse.

Isabella poured the Bailey’s with a question not quite reaching her lips.

Tata: We [I pointed around the room at all of us] are the bad kids.
Isabella: Why do you say that?
Tata: I’ve known us a long time.
Isabella: Most people didn’t know that about me where we worked together.
Tata: You held your cards close to your vest.
Isbella: And two aces in my bra and a bottle in the bottom drawer.

Isabella has been my friend for a very long time. Her daughter Trout and I met when she was 17, naked and unabashed; I was 14, terrified and trying to stuff myself into my gym locker. You know: to save time. Later, Trout’s brother Neil was one of my best friends and dance partner in some high school musical. For four people attending a deathbed, we laugh a lot. It’s a little jarring to the doctors when they walk in on us yapping about pictures of my red dining room or time trials on the first day of the Tour de France. Neil’s daughters play soccer at a serious level, so they were thrilled that I’d had physical therapy in the same gym as the players of Sky Blue FC.

Tata: A Brazilian player on the next stationary bike laughed at my jokes, though she didn’t speak English.
Neil: Which player? Rosana?
Tata: I think so. There was also one woman with fantastic tattoos.
Neil: That’s Natasha Kai. She runs onto the field and fouls someone. BLAM! Hi, I’m here!
Tata: I totally wanted to talk with her about the tats but I was always doing something stupid and awkward when she walked by. I couldn’t bring myself to pretend I was cool while ankle weights made me keel over sideways.

Isabella’s youngest son is married to the daughter of the Head of Housekeeping in the hospital. This means special things, like a fan for the patient, which seems to have come from the Payroll Department surreptitiously. We wonder if the hospital’s checks are going out sticky, but there’s nothing to worry about. Auntie takes care of it.

For days now, I’ve been level and bright in the hospital room, and exhausted at home and at work. This morning, I arranged a place for the inevitable memorial, which I worked out with all the patience of a German shepherd gnawing a soup bone. Tonight, Isabella caressed her husband’s arm and said to him, “It’s okay. Go for a long walk into the woods.” For the first time, I averted my eyes and lost my breath.

So here I am again, at the foot of the sickbed, watching the clock run down. Our families are marvels of construction on the fly; when the doctor asked on the first day who I was I said, “I’m the foster child.” Isabella blurted out, “Yes, but not really,” and the doctor smiled. By blood, the unconscious man struggling to breathe is no relation. He has called me “my other daughter” for a couple of decades, but I suppose I am really just a friend. On Thursday and Friday, there was still some hope he might survive the pneumonia, but no more. On Thursday morning, Isabella and I used tiny sponges on sticks to moisten his mouth with scant drops of water. It was a two-person job. I held the oxygen mask away from his face while Isabella sopped up a little liquid, placed the sponge in his mouth and hoped he would drink. Mostly, the morphine put him to sleep and our job was to watch and wait. I have been here before, and I am fine.

Lovely Topaz gives you the boo boo eyes. You are helpless before them!

Tonight, Mom reports that Grandpa’s become very frail. He sleeps a lot, she says. That’s good, I said. It means he’s not distressed. She says he wasn’t hungry for blueberry muffins a couple of days ago, but yesterday ate chowder with gusto. He’s fading, she says. I’ve been down this road, I said, fairly recently. I know, she says. You should try not to worry, I said, often things are worse when we worry than when they actually happen. I’ve been worried a lot, she says. There’s only one question left to ask, I said, did you open a bottle of wine yet? What, she asks. Red coping mechanism or white coping mechanism, I said. Actually, she says, I found a stray gin and tonic and gave it a good home. Call me tomorrow, I said.

This morning, my friend of 30 years walked toward me in the library and whispered in my ear, “Dad’s dead.” His relationship with his father was, as so many of ours are, not without its complexities. I listened to him talk for half an hour, complicating my relationship with my job. Then I quoted a poet of our mutual acquaintance: Alice B. Talkless. Once there were many black kings, I said. Once there were many red kings, I said. There were many black holes full of things that did not fit.

“That’s me,” he laughed. “That’s me, that’s me.”

We’re walking through the park at an impressive clip.

Tata: Okay okay okay, so the other day, I said, “Pete, I’d like a bread machine for my birthday and he said, “That’s good. I just ordered you one.”
Leilani: It’s your birthday?
Tata: It’s in a couple of weeks, but I’m like a crazy planner. Yesterday, it arrived, hooray!
Leilani: Hooray!
Tata: By midnight, we’d already had two disastrous doughs and this morning, I tore the one we baked into bird-size hunks. Of course, I left them at home. Sorry, geese!
Leilani: Why are we here?
Tata: Two years ago, my dad got sick and I went to Virginia for a month. I blogged about it the whole time and I know it was sometimes very hard for readers to deal with how awful it was, and how funny. I mean, picture saying to people, “Please read about my dad’s hilarious death.”
Leilani: Omigod, how did you know? Yesterday, we went to see the rabbi and everyone talked at the same time. I can’t imagine what people walking by thought, with the sobbing and roaring laughter.
Tata: What did you do last night?
Leilani: My friend Ranit came over. We went to Charlie Brown’s and it was really nice. Quiet there. She doesn’t drink but I did. I laughed and laughed, then I wondered what people might think.
Tata: Listen, you won’t know what’s going to help you grieve until you stumble upon it, so be prepared to stumble. Fortunately, you can stumble home from that place.
Leilani: I haven’t got anything to wear to the service tomorrow.
Tata: Anyone’s judgment is misplaced. You can go in a bathrobe, if it’s cozy.
Leilani: Thank you for talking to me like this.
Tata: Pfffft, when Daria, Todd, Dara and I were in Virginia, we started doing this chanting thing. I mean, who can explain that? One day, we were normal nutbags. Next thing we knew we were standing around the kitchen, warbling about who was getting the paper towels to clean up the garlic off the floor. I don’t know what that means, but I do think you should start a blog immediately. Immortalize your antics.
Leilani: Really? I’ll think about it.
Tata: Good. Later, Pete and I will do donuts around a parking lot while I fling handfuls of gummy failed bread into the air while birdies roil and scream.
Leilani: You’re coming back to the park?
Tata: Absolutely. And I’ll blog the duck ruckus, because should that be lost in the mists of time?