My dear friend David Stabler has died.

It was a difficult blow, made worse by the fact that his bone marrow transplant had seemed to be a success, his appetite and energy returning, allowing him to go home. We were traveling in the area and had hoped to see him shortly after he was released from the hospital.

But his respite was short-lived, an infection forced his return to the ICU and proved too difficult for his baby-new immune system to handle.

Our small, and now smaller, group that gathers yearly, shared our shock, our grief, our sense of surreal imbalance. For Dave was our leader, our wise and calm voice, a few years our senior, but the most fit, riding bicycles with his brother across the country, always a gentleman, always kind, always caring, always deeply interesting, always strong, even when his wife, our dear Judi, died several years ago.

It seems impossible that he is gone.

I will remember meeting him and Judi, at Stanford in 2000, where we had been chosen for a John S. Knight Fellowship for mid-career journalists. We were giddy with our great fortune, feeling like we had each won the lottery and ended up there together in a magical place with our spouses, some of us with young children. We sat in the student union one afternoon early on and shared stories of our past, including how we met our spouses. We learned of Dave and Judi’s wonderful love story, meeting as instructors at a music school in Alaska, where Judi had followed her first husband and Dave had found her. Dave, who grew up in Connecticut, but spent some formative years in Kenya, and Judi, who grew up on a ranch in Montana, riding horses. A perfect match. We learned of their children, the ones from Judi’s first marriage, and the one they shared together, all interesting, all loved.

At Stanford, we reverted to our youth, riding bicycles to class, taking long walks at The Dish, gathering for theme parties for absolutely no reason, checking out dive bars around campus, smoking stolen cigarettes (gasp!). We took all the classes we could cram into a day (no exams required for fellows!), including history, film, novels, poetry, short-story writing, the middle east. And I took swimming, yoga, and flute. Gini took a cadaver class.

Eventually, a small subset of the 12 U.S. journalists and eight foreign, formed a writing group, that we decided would meet weekly, share prompts, and critique each other’s work. Because being all Type A’s, attending Stanford for a year wasn’t enough for us. We wanted more. Dave, Brian, me, Bob, Bonnie, Jane and Gini would gather at a picnic table outside the campus beer joint, get a pitcher, and settle in. Hours later, having penciled notes on each other’s pieces, we would climb, rather tipsy, onto our bicycles and pedal home in the moonlight. It was very near to heaven.

That “year away” as we called it, allowed the formation of deep friendships, deeper than most adults find in their lives filled with duties at work, home and raising children. Our writing group devolved into a beer-drinking group, but remained so important to us that we decided we needed it to continue it after our Stanford year ended.

We began gathering each fall at a dumpy beach house at Manzanita Beach on the Oregon coast. Dave would make the arrangements, collect the money, remind us of the dates. He and Judi would show up their arms filled with wine, groceries, rain gear, books, newspapers and knitting. Each group would filter in from their flights and shared rental cars, dumping backpacks in their respective bedrooms and gathering around a table filled to groaning with a feast prepared by Judi.

It included me, Tom, our son Nate, Brian and Deborah and their kids, Clara and Jay, Bob, Bonnie, Jane and Gini.

We walked on the beach, ate and drank wine and beer and bourbon (for Bob, the southern contingent) and shared our “downloads,” verbal summaries of the year’s experiences, wins, losses, joys, frustrations. We played cards with the kids and put together puzzles. We hiked the Oregon trails. We went into Cannon Beach and wandered around the bookstore, grabbed candy at the taffy joint, bought yarn at the knitting store, stocked up on more wine and cheese at the grocery store and reunited at the coffee shop.

Our favorite night was when we word nerds played the dictionary game. We would cut up little strips of paper and give a pile to each person, kids included. The first person would look through the dictionary, pick a word that nobody knew, and write the definition on their slip of paper. Everyone else around the table would compose a fake definition, write it on their piece of paper, and all the pieces would go into the hat, to be read by the person who knew the real definition. Everyone would guess which definition was correct. One point to anyone who guessed correctly, one point to anyone whose fake definition received a vote. The description does not do the game justice, for the pandemonium that ensued was hard to describe. We laughed so hard we cried, sometimes having a hard time composing ourselves for the next round. The fake definitions were so good, so gross, so erudite, so crazy, so scatological, so unique, so all of the above. The kids, especially, floored us in their clever, sophisticated dupes. They often were the winners.

We would share books we were reading, shows we were watching, trips we were planning, or had taken, assignments we had gotten, editors we loved, editors we hated, family events, personal dreams.

In the early years, you could measure the joy by the cases of empty booze bottles, and the kids created a word for it, disvinaphobia, fear of lack of wine. But as we aged, the drinking lessened, until at our most recent, last year, a few beers and some kombucha, were the extent of the imbibing.

It was the real Big Chill, and we loved each other. It was the first event I inked into my calendar, the one that couldn’t be missed.

Tom, Nate and I started staying overnight with Dave and Judi in Portland before catching our flight out the next morning. These extra hours added another deeper layer to our friendship. Judi and I shared our obsession with fiber, sewing, knitting, embroidery, quilting. Her studio, in one of the extra bedrooms, inspired the one I have in Phoenix. Tom perused Judi’s wall of cookbooks. Dave showed us where he was writing his book. We grilled corn in the driveway. We listened to Dave and Judi play on the baby grand piano in the living room. We admired Judi’s beautiful paintings hung on the walls. We talked about the lessons they gave, in voice and piano.

Once we were in The Epic Van, we would stop for several days, parked in the street in front of their house. Sometimes, driving through Georgia, or Colorado, we would look at each other and say, “Let’s call Dave and Judi.” There were always two lovely voices on the phone, an interesting conversation, a deep insight.

Dave was the person I called when I woke up one morning to find news of Brian’s death in a house fire in Vancouver, Washington. “He’s dead,” I howled into the phone. Dave had not heard, but soon gathered all the pertinent information.  Brian was the first loss from our group. Judi was the next.

When Judi died, we watched the service online, unable to attend. When it came time to dismantle her studio, I bought it. After a Manzanita gathering, Dave, Tom and I packed it up, fabric, yarn, supplies, and we later flew from Arizona to Portland, rented a U-Haul and drove it back to my studio. Now, every day I work in my studio, I am touching fabric that was Judi’s.

We have had gatherings since, although I can’t remember how many, maybe because I always feel her presence there.

This year, because of Dave’s illness, there was no gathering. We could not bear to plan something he could not attend. We vowed, “Next year.” Like, “Next year, in Paris.” But “Next year, at Manzanita.”

Dave shared his progress through diagnosis with leukemia and his decision to get a bone marrow transplant, and the support of his children, his brother, Martin, and sister-in-law, his friends. We wrote emails, and we talked on the phone. Once Dave was in the hospital, Martin was in charge of updates and kept everyone in the loop, including the last, devastating developments, so difficult to absorb.

I will remember Dave’s kindness and patience and grace with all of us, who sometimes got mad, sometimes drank too much, sometimes forgot to send him money for the reservation, sometimes needed rides to and from the airport, sometimes got too loud playing solitaire war (Judi was the most competitive, even cheating at times. I saw her.)

I will remember Dave’s discipline, writing each day, meeting each week with his Portland writing group, which I always envied, watching one, or two, episodes of the TV series he was currently into, then going to bed at the same time each night. I’m a binging, late-night, sleep-in, never-get-a-book-written, kind of person.

I will remember Dave’s love of movement and the outdoors, riding his bike to work at the Oregonian, even in the ever-present rain, riding with us on our get-togethers, most recently at Skaha Lake in Canada, riding with his regular Portland group who stopped for coffee afterward, kayaking on the river near Manzanita, hiking in the dripping trees along the Oregon coast.

I will remember Dave and Judi’s love for each other, particularly when Judi developed Lewy body dementia. Dave navigated it with his caring grace, loving her deeply to the very end. I remember visiting him shortly after she died, having lunch in the kitchen, and Dave saying, “Isn’t it amazing how much it takes to make a sandwich. I never realized.” He never realized because Judi always made him a sandwich, just the way he liked it.

I will remember Dave’s deep intellectual curiosity, his ever-growing knowledge of music, how he shared that through classes he organized for people who followed his writing at the Portland Oregonian, (we got to attend one when we were visiting), the wonderful books and shows he recommended.

I will remember Dave’s amazing writing, particularly the story when he followed a child prodigy on the cello. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t get to tell him that I recently read Story Craft, The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, by Jack Hart, the former managing editor and writing coach at the Oregonian, who mentioned on page four how this series was Dave’s first narrative effort and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Later in the book, he spends several pages describing David’s story about a last-minute stand-in pianist for the Oregon Symphony, who had to play one of the most difficult pieces ever written.

I will remember Dave’s strong connection to his brother, Martin, who was always present in his life, took the amazing cross-country bicycle trip with him, helped him with the audio-visuals  for his music courses and was his steady supporter at the end.

I will remember Dave’s love for and pride in each of his children, most recently when Dan finished his bachelor’s degree, and Dave sent us a photo of the graduation.

I will remember his humbleness.

I will remember his sweet smile and warm hugs.