We WERE There

Dedicated to my dear uncle Jerry (a wondrous retired high school and college composition teacher), who abruptly became gravely ill, underwent daunting surgery, went into and out of a tortuous coma, made an amazing comeback, insisted on being discharged not to an assisted-living facility but to his own normal-living apartment, and then abruptly died, all in the space of 6 weeks, at the admittedly not young but adamantly not elderly age of 75.