At the end of the day, the news is finally sinking in and I am developing a slow leak on the train. Instead of going to Indiana this weekend to visit our sick friend, we are going to a funeral.

When a stone lands in the water, it sinks and leaves ripples. I am coming home to forwarded e-mails and listserv-circulated details about arrangements. He knew everybody and never had an unkind word to say, although he was sometimes mischievous. I used to visit his shop on Saturday afternoons and gossip about our mutual friends. When he went into the hospital, I hear, the people hung paper cranes from the door of the shop. We have lost that link.

I knew the news was bad but I thought surely he would last a little longer, long enough for me to tell him thanks for all the music and friendship. Would it have made a difference to him? It made a difference to me.

Tears are leaking out unobtrusively (I think) and I see there is a kid in a parka watching me. Who knows what our little dramas look like from the outside?

I last saw him in July. The speed at which people can be lost is appalling. There is a hole in the fabric of our old hometown and a hole in our hearts.

At Western the parka kid gets off the train and I am still sitting there. As he goes by me he looks straight at me and gives me a solidarity gesture: thumbs up.