I try and try explaining. I get close, I feel it, I fall back. I fail afresh. I can’t explain. You must help me out with it. Please, provide a little of your own, from your own rich life. I’ll count on that. You had to have been there.

Thank you. You have been.

She soon flew off to Los Angeles; she stayed in close touch with those already installing her work in Berlin. She kept posted about his temperature, R’s vital signs. She had won a fellowship that was, she joked, perfect for a father’s girl, coming from an outfit called D.A.D. She also joked, Now she’d had D.A.D., but would she ever get MOMA? The prize meant a residency, but she told them that sick friends would prevent her really living in Germany those six months. They still gave her the award and the big-time show at its end. She’d brought to Robert’s room that little German-perfect model of the gallery, showing us where each of her pictures went, in miniature. He loved all that, holding it. He lit up as ever and was soothed for days after her visits. It sedated me to see him far far calmer thanks to her. That made my work easier.

The rest of us, without her, tried to keep him entertained, then merely amused, then just distracted. And, finally, warm.

Before Robert’s eyesight faltered, we borrowed gorgeous objects for him. On approval, I’d spring beautiful things from antique shops so he could study them up close. Even with my favorite receptionist presiding downstairs, this hospital felt so fluorescent and blank. Robert’s room itself seemed a sure first step off the cliff, a banishment from every visual pleasure.

So, even for us, we overdecorated. And lavishly admitted it. Our aesthetic fallback position—like that of the long-lost Moorish Princess odalisquing at the Saint Mark’s Baths—ran to automatic excess. A damned good thing, considering the Operaticness of late, these death scenes were so hard to stage correctly. Familiar patterns soon set in and, if you weren’t scrupulous, the same Latin-fusion-jazz combo was heard playing the same few selections at identical memorial services in the similar splashy lofts.

“We can’t go on meeting like this” was our jokey funeral greeting of the moment. “Or can we?” came the follow-up zinger.

With us, it was reverse Bauhaus. Less Is More? Less ain’t, girlfriend. Mo’ is!—And Curly. And Larry, too.

Our golden rule: “When in doubt, toss in those two extras with the fringe.”