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I found out today that a friend died. It wasn’t a shock. He’d been ill for a while now. But no one is ever really prepared, though Laurence did his best to help us along. He threw a big party a few months ago. It wasn’t sad at all, but festive. It’s one of the good things about knowing you’re going. You get to enjoy your own send-off.

I hadn’t known Laurence long. He and I were in a writing group together that meets every two weeks. He had been a member of the group for ten years. I just joined a year ago. I didn’t always like hearing what he had to say about what I wrote. But that’s because he was the best kind of friend a writer can have, one who is not afraid of the uncomfortable truths we writers don’t want to tell each other. What we don’t want to hear is what we need to know. And Laurence never backed away from that.

We meet at this sad little Chinese restaurant in the city because it’s a good location, cheap, and they don’t run us out for staying way past when the dishes are cleared. None of us particularly like the food, but we all have our regular orders. Chicken fried until you almost can’t taste the chicken, dishes with sauces the colors usually found in neon signs. I could always tell how Laurence was feeling by what he ordered. Spicy and heavy, he was doing fine. Bland and light or nothing at all, he was having a rough time of it. Many times he had to leave early because the evening dragged on past his endurance.

Once, last fall, we thought he was going to be OK. To celebrate, we splurged for dinner at upscale sushi place around the corner where they have names for food that sound like items in a Victoria Secret catalog. I got to sit across from Laurence and we made jokes about the names. He ate well that night. He was happy. And that’s how I will remember him.

A few weeks ago, our little writing group took a road trip up to the magical place in Sonoma County where Laurence was living his last days. It was a glorious day as we sat out on the deck, enjoyed each other’s company, drank wine, ate, talked of writing. Laurence gave us all a copy of his last novel. I was privileged to be among the others in the group that he thanked in the acknowledgements even though I’d hadn’t been in the group long enough to contribute nearly as much as others had. It didn’t matter. He was very gentlemanly that way.

I haven’t talked to the others yet about Laurence’s passing other than saying we will have to have a special toast to him at our next meeting. Everyone is quiet in their grief. Perhaps we’re all writing about it. Maybe we’ll share what we write with each other. And if we do, I’m sure we will all be passionately honest with other, sparing no punches, just like Laurence would want us to.