E and I were never an item, but at various points (a kind of quantum blur extending a year either side of our high school graduation in mid-1970) we had episodes of what was even then no longer called "heavy petting." I didn't see her from 1975-1990; in the latter seventies she married, and I did not meet her spouse until about this time four years ago. He struck me as a pleasant, if feckless chap; the marriage itself I suspect to have been one of those distributed narratives, with neither party having entire access to the collective pieces forming the full story.

Whatever that story may have been, it concluded today or yesterday with the husband's death, apparently after a prolonged period of failing health (I had not heard from E since last spring), of a stroke. He leaves behind his personable wife, of whom I confess I cannot think without dissonant associations of ca. 1970 slap-and-tickle, and two college-age daughters. I hope he was better-insured than I suspect he was. Et in Arcadia ego.

cordially,