Story of My Wife

Then out of the blue, as he was walking through an airport somewhere -- if he had to guess, he'd say it was in New Orleans -- the "big dam of denial" that had sustained him collapsed. For the first time, he admitted to himself that things could have ended badly. He pictured himself telling his daughters that their mother was dead.

"It literally sort of knocked me over," Trillin says.

He staggered to a chair. People stopped to ask if he needed help. Soon enough, however, the image faded and he flew home.

He kept this moment to himself. He doesn't think he ever told Alice.

More than two decades of happiness ensued.

Yes, Trillin found himself walking out of "Terms of Endearment" because he couldn't face the part where the dying Debra Winger says goodbye to her kids. Yes, there was a terrifying false alarm about recurrence in 1990.

And yes, close observers might have noticed that Alice, in particular, seemed to place a greater than average value on peak experiences -- a wonderful meal, a perfect sunset -- as if she were counting each day. As a teenager, Sarah says, she sometimes felt exhausted by the pressure to "live life to its fullest," though she understands the impulse now.

But most of the time the rumble of panic remained inaudible. Or at least low enough for laughter to drown it out.

A Bit More Emotion

"You have to promise now," Alice said.

The subject was Abigail's wedding, in the spring of 2001, and the promise she extracted from her husband was that the festivities would go on exactly as planned -- whether or not she was there.

A few weeks before, doctors had discovered serious damage to her heart, an aftereffect of the radiation used to treat her cancer a quarter century earlier. Four months after the wedding, on the evening of Sept. 11 -- yes , that Sept. 11 -- she died of cardiac arrest.

For those close to the Trillins, the merging of public and private griefs felt surreal.