It was sudden. A small heart attack had been a warning, doctors said. Slow down. Take it easy. His wife was to pick him up and drive him home from the hospital late on a Saturday morning. He died before she arrived.

I knew him only a short time, for a few years as my boyfriend's father, for a few years as my father-in-law. I never called him by his first name. I was too young and he was too old for that informality…