His family has been steeling itself for this moment since last summer after the Scripps Institute doctors pronounced him incurable.

One afternoon in December, he telephoned me from home in Laguna Hills to say he had met with the mortician, completing all ritual and financial arrangements.

I was stuck, paralyzed over how to respond. In lieu of clarity, I mumbled.

Walt’s Children

Chris, his son in Wyoming, has been flying in regularly, most recently for last weekend with his wife and teenage boy and girl, whom their grandfather adores. Chris is scheduled to fly back in on Friday morning, and the family is hoping for one more moment, all together.

Jason, Walt’s son in Corona, has been wearing out the highway.

Charlaine, the Marlow daughter who has lived most of her years confronting threatening health, is the designated family caretaker. She is almost never away from home.

The Church’s Farewell

Last Wednesday, everyone was worried that the end was within view, and a Catholic priest was summoned to administer the last rites.

Diane and I were planning our monthly excursion to their home on Saturday night, Walt’s 82nd birthday. But Charlaine urgently telephoned yesterday morning. She said Saturday likely would be too late.

Not only metaphorically but in reality, the last gasps of daylight were fleeing the southern Orange County coastal community when I entered Walt and Blanche’s extremely warm bedroom.

­
There Is a Pulse

Everything appeared to be in order. Young Nurse Christine sat at the edge of a makeshift seat near the foot of the bed.

Periodically, perhaps to comfort the family as much as anything else, she checked Walt’s faint and fainter pulse.

A relatively robust hundred-and-fifty-pounder in his prime when we worked together at the defunct Orange County Evening News and the equally defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, his terminal illness had shrunk him to 79 or 80 pounds.

His morphine-induced serenity gave hope for a slightly longer future to those of us who wave at and cling to belief in miracles.

The Hour Is Near

Blanche, herself wracked with debilitating health for more than 30 years, climbed into bed, slowly and with difficulty, to be closer. Because. And just in case.

She studied her comatose, occasionally responsive, bony husband wordlessly. She wanted to say something. She wanted to do something.

Blanche turned in the direction of Nurse Christine. “Hours?” she wondered, succinctly. “I don’t know,” said Nurse Christine. “It’s up to God. Doctors can’t predict. Nurses can’t predict.”

Wearing a rosary around her neck, reclining restlessly in a room replete with traditional icons and symbols of their Catholicism, Blanche did not need to comment on or amplify the answer.

Learning from His Masters

The family picture was completed with the presence of Sparky, the faithful, obedient, noiseless, droopy-eyed, nearly human family dog. He never met a man he didn’t care about. Sparky learned that trait after coming to live with the Marlows.

Sparky paced, unobtrusively, across the bedroom carpet.

A Curtain of Sorrow

He may have been oblivious to the surge of unbroken heat generated in the room, and the soft clicking emanating from his master’s respirator.

His eyes reddening throughout the evening, Sparky was keenly aware, though, that a curtain of sorrow inexorably was being drawn across everyone’s aching souls.

Nurse Christine must have been right. The next morning has arrived. Walt still is breathing. Labored breaths count. They mean, selfishly, we have time.

The sun presently is rising over Laguna Hills — whether for the last time over the full complement of Marlows, no one knows.