From La Guardia Place

Dear all,
I've stayed with Ed tonight. (I just happened to be visiting for one day, yesterday, of all days.) He says he has slept very poorly in the last months but appears to be sleeping now.
Let me recap the last couple of days. Monday morning I arrived in NYC and went directly to stay with friends on the upper-west side. Tuesday morning a bit after 9:30 I arrived at the hospice. Ed was there with an aide, Shelley. He had just spent the whole night there: they had woken him from his place at midnight to tell him that B's breathing had changed. Indeed, B was wearing an oxygen mask and her breathing was very labored. Her eyes were usually slightly opened, but there was no ocular response or indeed any sign that she was aware of her surroundings. She looked very shrunken from the loss of muscle mass.
Ed kept waiting for the doctor, whom several people had said would come by at various times, to ask about the oxygen mask and mottling of B's skin. At about 11:30 Mimi (who had arrived in the meantime) and I encouraged Ed to go home to get some sleep. We told him we would get him if something changed. He left and Steve Childress arrived. As the three of us were talking, suddenly Steve and Mimi noticed that her breathing had slowed dramatically, to a whisper. After conferring we decided to call back Ed.
I was difficult to tell exactly when she died. The breathing just became more and more subtle and eventually we just had to admit that she was dead. The saddest thing was that Ed didn't quite make it back in time -- I feel terrible for insisting he go home and get some rest. But on the other hand B was clearly completely unaware of her surroundings.
The rest of the day was a scramble for funeral arrangements (Steve took care of that). Mike Shelley and Jun Yin came over. We waited for the people to come and collect the body around 3:30. By that time only Ed and I were left. We took a taxi back to La Guardia Place because we had bags of B's clothes to carry. We then had a pastis and chatted for a while. Around six we went out to eat Japanese food nearby, with Mike. I'm happy to report that the discussion was the usual academic gossip. Ed of course is devastated but has enough energy and drive to talk science, as well as to complain about this blog. He stayed up part of the evening answering every condolence letter individually.
Ah, I hear him: he is up now!
All the best,
Jean-Luc