Lynette, with her maroon winter jacket, rust colored corduroy slacks, neat suede snow boots, and pink knit hat. Her skin the color of light coffee, a bright slash of pink lipstick, everything about her pressed, and impeccable. She says the doctor says she is healing very well, the bones knitting together as they should.

When she fell and broke her femur, and they carried her out of the house, she clutched my hand and said yes, she would like me to come to the hospital with her. And I put my name on the list of people they should call, and they called me and said that they had done the surgery, and she was doing very well. Later we came to visit her, with flowers, and she was already sitting up, wanting to get herself back home.

Who will lift her out of bed? Who will decide that she can’t be trusted with the stove, or her medications, or the stairs? Who will sell her house, and sort through the boxes of clothes, and letters, and bills, fold up the cover of her car, unplug the heater that keeps the radiator from freezing, and tow the car away? Where will she go?

We were talking, at Martha and Rob’s, about how we ignore the end of life in this country, how we can’t bear to think about old people. Roger Fisher, the brilliant Harvard professor who taught me when I was a freshman, the man who brokered negotiations between Israel and Palestine, advised presidents, tottering along the sidewalk, stooped and silver, quivering on his cane, living in the retirement home next to Jesse’s school, a place where they organize recreational activities in the afternoon—pottery painting, bingo, movies. I heard an advertisement this afternoon for a retirement home, promising activities that promote growth. It seemed deceitfully cheerful. And I wondered: is it consoling to paint pottery, after you have sat with presidents and kings, advising them on foreign policy?