His obituary's indifferent capital letters tell me he is dead. My friend Tim with cancer inside his head prompting surgeries and fear, tears, hope, crushed hope. We visited, then we stayed away.

The obituaries and I often have coffee together since Ed died. When your friends are sick, you check.

Carefully I read the names every day.

We knew and did not want to know. Each day passed and we learned: Tim is in the hospital, or Tim is back home...

Today I found his name.

Jerry.

Do I tell him right away? Do I warn him that I am about to tell him?

I call and say, Jerry? Timmy Eye died Saturday.

On the couch later I snuggle under his ridiculous pink blanket and he says, can you believe Timmy is dead.

I look at the gray and red stubble sprouting, I look at dog hair stuck in the blanket's weave. I look out the back door at cats on our patio.

No, I tell him.

Brain cancer.

A friend, a soft laugh. Fingers worn with work. Strong hands. Timmy was a quiet man.

A couple summers ago we drove through town and I called them up. Visiting was tough. He was not Timmy the guy ready for a beer and happy to see his friends. He wasn't feeling well, and I sensed he was angry that his words would not come, that his thoughts were slow from treatments and medication.

But we spent time with him, just a little.

There is such a looming abyss of nothing between you and someone with his hands on the bottom rung of death.

I will miss my friend. I will see him in the spaces he once occupied next to his wife when we get together for Christmas, when we plan our camping trip, whenever we are together and he is not there.

Suddenly, we are one less.

The day after Timmy died I wrapped gloved hands around Jerry and held on. Wind plucked at my sunglasses and I would not know my friend had died for another day. Through falling red and orange leaves, I watched sunlight filter through an autumn tree canopy, tossing pastel shadows across the stream of motorcycles. At a Litchfield county winery gravel crunched beneath kickstands.