I pull into the driveway of his brick bungalow and there he is, waiting for me. He’s propped in a folding chair in the sun, shielding his eyes with a soldier’s salute.

Three months ago we’d been strangers. “I want you to write what it’s like to grow old,” he’d emailed me, “always looking at life over your shoulder. My wife of 55 years has been taken from me by illness. Maybe one day you could visit her in the nursing home. She is in room 19. Her name is Ada. Warm regards, Carl, 87.

The following Sunday, I’d sat with Carl in Ada’s room, acutely aware that a bedrail was all that divided this sick woman from my well self. Carl held his wife’s limp hand and whispered fighting words in her ear, trying to replenish her health with his. “She’s not coming back to me, is she?” he asked. Three days later, Ada died.