Regarding the book, what I am asked most often is, “Where are they now? What happened to your friends? Are they still alive?” I wish they all were because I miss them. I wish they could hold the book – their story – in their own hands.

But all things continue to change, whether we are conscious of those changes or not. I would be more aware of them except that this continuous movement happens in small, subtle ways. The tiny increments of change take a long time to realize that it has been happening at all. You may have experienced this. Have you ever looked in the mirror, noticed a startling difference and wondered, “When did that happen?”

Nothing stays the same, though sometimes I wish it would. Every once in a while I find myself wishing that time itself would slow way down. Experiences are so big and happen so fast that I miss things – nuances and connections to the threads that color my own life’s tapestry. If time would just slow down a little, it would be easier to embrace each moment, know it intimately, and fully experience it. Perhaps then I wouldn’t miss anything, or stuff it away until I had time later. But I blink. And the moment is gone… as the next moment, and the next, and the next rush in to fill its space.

Then sometimes a moment arrives that cannot be missed or stuffed away. It was almost two years after I moved from New Mexico when Emma called to tell me Gus had suffered a heart attack. They were in Albuquerque having dinner with friends in what’s called the NE Heights. It’s a lovely part of the city, snuggled up against the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, populated by older homes with big yards and the best seats in the house for sunsets, eighty miles away. Facing west, one could watch liquid fire pour over the Navajo’s sacred Mount Taylor – first brashly changing the mountain’s color, then primly hiding its face behind the softening orange glow that finally winks out like a dying ember.

After dinner, they were all enjoying the beginning of another dramatic sunset when Emma noticed Gus looked “green around the gills” as she put it. In Emma’s lilting voice she told me, “I’ve looked at that man a million times and never once saw him look like he weren’t all there. He seemed to be driftin’ outta focus inside himself. Then he turned all pale and grabbed his belly and said, ‘Oomph.’ That were it. Just oomph and fell over on the table.”

Symptoms leading to a heart attack are so varied that I wondered she had the presence of mind to know what was happening. But she knew right away. She continued, “And while ever’one else was just gettin’ used to the idea of Gus layin’ face down on the table, I yelled out to call 911.” He spent a week in the hospital. But even the best of care couldn’t repair the damage to his great and generous heart. Gus had another heart attack three weeks later and died. Emma told me it was the best three weeks of their lives. “Oh, boy, did that man talk!” she told me. “My Gus was purty slim on words, but I think he’d been savin’ up, cause they poured outa him like somebody poked a hole in Hoover Dam.”

Emma stayed at their little farm only a few months, then sold it. It was too much for a single woman over seventy to take care of, even with the neighbors, Doc, and Jake helping. Her youngest daughter, Karla, begged her to move to Arkansas. A few months after Gus was buried, Emma left New Mexico to live with her daughter’s family, especially with those four grandchildren she claimed were brighter than new pennies.

She talked with Doc and Jake who kept her regaled with stories from New Mexico. She and I talked frequently – sometimes for an hour or more about everything imaginable. We roared with laughter, cried together, explored new ideas and listened deeply to each other, as I became ever more aware of how well read she was, how curious, and how finely she had crafted her own understanding of Life. She was at peace with Gus leaving. She missed him ‘somethin’ fierce,’ as she told me. But she had a strong internal compass. And unlike Cochon and my father, she did not lose her Polestar when her husband and best friend died because her Polestar was God Almighty Himself.

A couple years after Gus died, she went to sleep and didn’t wake up. We had talked two days prior. It was an interesting conversation about our losses – MJ, Cochon, my mother, and Gus. It wasn’t maudlin, but strangely upbeat. And perhaps strangely prescient. “I’m ready whenever the good Lord calls me,” she said, and I could hear the grin in her voice.

But I wasn’t grinning. “Well, I’m glad you’re ready, Emma, but I’m not.” In that moment I wanted time to slow down so the years wouldn’t find us. “Besides, you’re healthier than people I know half your age. You’re not going anywhere any time soon.” I was trying to convince us both as I realized how much closer she was to that magical age called ‘old’ than I was. I finally asked the question that floated between us. “Emma, when you think about dying, are you nervous? Or afraid?”

She paused, finding her words. “Well, there is a little kinda nervous feelin’, but it’s not nervous-scairt, it’s nervous butterflies like I had before gettin’ on a Ferris wheel for the first time.” She chuckled. “It’s kinda excitin’! I don’t want to hurry it along none, mind you, but I’m lookin’ forward to the adventure.” And two days later, she got her wish and joined The Final Adventurer’s Club.

Her daughter, Karla, told me Emma didn’t want a viewing, just a party with laughter, tears, and some good down-home cooking. She requested they play Three Dog Night, John Denver, and Neil Diamond for her sendoff. She didn’t want her ashes sent back to NM to be sprinkled where Gus was buried. That surprised me, especially after being together over fifty years. “Did she say why?” I asked her daughter.

“She told me not to worry; she and Dad would find each other just fine.” We both laughed at that one. Emma left money for cremation, an apple tree to plant in the new town park, a wooden bench to go under the tree, and a plaque. Though her ashes went into the rich soil under the new fruit tree, she didn’t want her name anyplace. Just a tree and a comfortable wooden bench with a plaque on it. Karla told me the plaque reads,