Gino was raised on wakes, mass cards, and tin foil covered casseroles delivered warm. He hasn’t called her in years, but as soon as he learns her husband died he becomes a presence. He’s just an hour and a half away. He wants to see her, wants to support her. Will be there for her. But he’s tied up right now, needs to take care of a few things.

She orders death certificates and plans cremation. Sympathy cards become an altar on the fireplace mantle. Cheap glass vases emptied of flowers line up on the counter next to soup cans and wine bottles, waiting for the next Tuesday, and then the Tuesday after that for recycling. Everything is different, quiet, lonely.

Other friends visit regularly. They load the recycling bin with the cans and vases and bottles and pull it to the curb. They carry firewood into the house. They began helping even before her husband’s home hospice. Dropped off food. Shoveled the driveway. Walked the dog. Like elves they bought and decorated a Christmas tree. Gino calls again, asks the same questions, tells the same stories, tries to get her to laugh. He says he’s planning to see her. Soon.

Weeks later when he still hasn’t visited, her friends whisper knowingly: He always does this, and . . . Because I’m with the group, they trail off before completing the thought. They change the conversation, start a grocery list, ask if she’d like more wine along with half and half. We help her sort through bags of medical supplies, drop fentanyl patches at the fire department, Google how to responsibly dispose of morphine.

In another life, I heard Gino make these calls. After biopsy or emergency heart bypass. When a parent passed. I know, he’d say, can you believe it’s been all these years. I’ll make sure seeing you happens soon. He’d say good-bye and cross the obligation off his scrap paper to-do list.

I knew his soons too well. I’ll get an apartment soon. I’ll hire a lawyer soon. Be patient, and I’ll be ready soon. I hear he lives with a girlfriend who craves marriage. I imagine her in their shared apartment listening and waiting for him to finish a call. Thirty-two years married, ten of them with me and now ten with her. Does she also wonder: when is soon?

As the weather warms she finds notes her husband tucked into books and folders. Her friends divide their perennials to build her a garden. She holds the plan her husband left and points out exactly what he wanted to see the yard to become. True, the friends say, this is not the garden he hoped to build, but it’s still a start.

One evening she and I sit on the orange cushioned patio furniture she bought just after his diagnosis. She thought he would live to spring. She’s worried he hasn’t yet appeared in her dreams. We joke about seances, mediums, and Ouija boards. She tells me she tries to summon him. She describes talking to him just as she did when he was alive and sitting beside her, half-listening, half in the world of his own imagination, with her but already mentally immersed in the next day’s writing. When she steps inside for another bottle of wine and fleece throws for our cold feet, I wonder what would happen if we used a Ouija set, if we took it into their bedroom where he died. On my phone I search online to see how quickly I could have one delivered. As soon as the picture appears on the screen, I feel the heart shaped planchette moving under my fingertips. But I had forgotten the bottom of the board itself reads “Good Bye.” No one mourning the future needs good-bye again and again. I close the search just as she returns.

She’s stopped picking up, stopped responding, she says as we drink. Now, he’s just a voicemail, a bolded subject line and unopened email. Something always comes up. She plans a memorial party at their house. Invites all their friends. On the evite’s public page, Gino chooses no, he can’t be there. She shows me what he has written: I have a family thing. Let’s get together soon. When the dust clears.