But somehow, whenever I came to see him, he still managed to smile, a gentle, warm, unhurried smile that seemed to come from somewhere the illness could not reach.

We began to talk.

And there was something in our conversations, from the very first, that surprised us both, a quality of ease and depth that does not usually arrive between strangers, and certainly not quickly.

Within just a few days, those conversations had become the thing I most looked forward to, and, I could tell, the thing he most looked forward to as well.

He was a good listener, and a thoughtful talker, and there was a kind of quiet wisdom in him, worn smooth by long years, that drew me in.