Maggie has been married, twice. Aggie has known men (four). Their experiences have produced Maggie’s daughter Sarah (now twenty-six, working in Philadelphia, and happily pregnant), Agatha’s two abortions, various and sundry orgasms, and individual conclusions that neither wants marriage and that Aggie probably doesn’t want a man. She may not want a woman either, that way. She thinks sex is overrated. Maggie is more highly sexed but tends to agree with her friend; American sex in the new millennium is more talk than action. Everybody’s jawing about it, making jokes and movies and surveys and studies about it, and most folks seem too old, too tired, too disappointed to actually do it.

They have sex on their minds lately, because of Sarah’s pregnancy. She’s unmarried, but she has been with Jack for two years; she’s sure about paternity. And she seems very happy right now, but Maggie wonders and Aggie worries. They know Sarah, or they remember themselves, and they are not prepared for her to remain mated.

Walking along the ridge trail, watching Diggy flush an old tennis ball from a tangle of juniper and planning a visit to Sarah before the snow gets too deep, the two old friends make a comfortable sight. Maggie is wearing a green jacket over blue jeans, striding a bit ahead of Aggie and then pausing. Aggie’s gray-blonde curls bounce over a red sweatshirt above brown cords; they are colorful under the November sun. The dog runs ahead of them and comes back with the ball, drops it slimily on Maggie’s toe, barks at her to throw.

They speak of airline schedules, but they both know what’s on Maggie’s mind. Her mother is dying. Aggie lost her mother when she was in college; only through Mag has she experienced advanced age with an elderly mom. But Maggie’s mother lives close and has been close. She had her first heart attack twelve years ago. She had her first stroke last summer. She is now in the hospital and no one expects her to come out alive. She reclines on an adjustable bed within a complex web of tubes and wires, with very little power left to choose or even speak.

Aggie has never been a hospital patient, but she was there when Maggie had complications delivering Sarah, and again when Maggie had to have an emergency hysterectomy two decades ago. They both know how sudden and utter the loss of dignity can be.

“I just can’t stand seeing her like that,” Maggie grumps, kicking a gnarled stick with the toe of her right shoe. “I want to pull all that tubing and get her out of there.”

“I know. I know,” and Aggie touches her jacket sleeve at the elbow. “But, honey, even before she went in, she was frail …” It’s true. Like a sick child Maggie’s ailing mother has become passive and sweet, her once-feisty energy submerged in some pain-laden, fear-laced condition. “At least you had her all this time.”

That strikes home with Maggie, not only because Aggie lost her mother early, but because Maggie’s own mother was unmothered at twenty-six, at Sarah’s age, when she was pregnant with Maggie.

“I guess.”

“I’m not trying to sell you on anything.” Aggie dances from foot to foot, trying to dodge Dig’s attempts to give her the filthy tennis ball. “At least you’ve been able to be close these last three decades. And thank God your dad went first.” Maggie’s father had been less than resilient, and besotted with his wife; he would have made a pathetic widower.

“Based on what your mother taught us,” Aggie concludes, “we’d be better off planning our visit to Sarah than the kidnapping of your terminal parent.”

Maggie smiles at her friend, stoops for the tennis ball, throws with a looping hook to the left. “Too bad Mom won’t be around to meet the baby. I know. I know. At least she got twenty-six years of Sarah. Infinitely more than her mother got of me.”

I guess this is it. I may last a few more days or a week, but I can feel life leaving me, like water leeching from a sponge. Like the almost-felt dissipation of a headache.

Ironic that I who spoke so much and so fast can’t talk at all at the end. Now the ideas tumble in on me that decades of projected words held at bay. Now the ideas crowd and surprise: they aren’t as oppressive as I always thought they’d be.

Here’s my girl, Mother-of-Sarah, soon-to-be-grandmother, and I can’t speak to her. I realize I’m thinking at her in Yiddish and, really, I haven’t been there for sixty years. Here’s old Aggie, who I’ve known forever, and we can only communicate with eyes and hand presses. If I weren’t so tired this would be beyond frustrating.

I’m leaving you girls. Girls. Go ahead and be happy. Be a little rash and impulsive. Do whatever it takes (no hurting). This stuff doesn’t matter. This posture, this equipment: it’s only on a body, for a short time. Make your whiles worthy.