Hilary Has died.

Lake Union, Seattle, WA, 5:30 am PT, 12-Apr-2019 – At 6:03 am this morning, Atlanta time, with Jennifer holding her hand, Hilary drew her last breath and breathed no more.

Her passing was as Jennifer has hoped, peaceful and quiet. Jennifer was with her and Hilary was not afraid.

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Hilary was born on July 16^th, 1937. She was the second of three daughters. Her father was a career US diplomat of some standing. In a famous story, Hilary’s mother worried that she wouldn’t remember the names of people she’d meet. She was told not to worry, the people she’d meet would remember her.

The distance in age between Hilary and her older sister, Carol, was such that there was sibling rivalry. A famous story has Carol and a friend running one after the other through a paddock with a bull in it. By the time little Hilary follows, the bull has noticed the interlopers and comes after Hilary. I don’t know what happened, the story ends there.

Hilary was strong willed, rebellious, and she later told us, suffered from what we would call Attention Deficit disorder (ADHD). Hilary was raised in multiple countries, much of the time in latin America with servants. It was a different time and the role of children and wives was different. Hilary spoke fluent Spanish, which she learned from the servants, and passable German, which she learned while in a Swiss boarding school. There are multiple stories of Hilary’s mother, Pauline, receiving a telegram telling her to sell off the contents of the house and follow with the children to some country or other.

Hilary’s father was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded and was a ‘‘guest’’ of the Japanese for some months. He returned to the US very skinny versus his normal, somewhat rotund, self. Jennifer confused Babar the elephant with her grandfather when she was a young child.

Hilary was Hilary. Hilary made her own way. And, Hilary was different.

She attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)*, was featured with some classmates on the Sunday magazine cover of the Providence Journal, but dropped out of RISD. Hilary was living in San Francisco in 1961 when she became pregnant with Jennifer by Jack, who was fifteen years her senior. They married. Hilary’s father did not attend the wedding in protest.

Stories of Hilary abound: Hilary shinnying down a drain pipe, or climbing down a tree to leave the house at night. Hilary disappearing into Mexico as an adult for six weeks with no word to her children (who were young adults).

My relationship with Hilary was through Jennifer, which was how I saw Hilary.

I met Hilary when I was 50 and Hilary was 67. Hilary had a spark constantly firing inside her, and I couldn’t help thinking, if I had met Hilary and not Jennifer, she would have been a wonderful woman to have a fling with. She had such an attractive joie de vivre that every male wanted to have some of that spark and to bathe in that playful excitement she emanated.

It was very quickly apparent that Jennifer was and, from an early age, always had been the parent, not the other way around. But, Hilary took a job at a private school to earn money and reduced tuition so Jennifer’s brother, Aaron, could attend.

I first met Hilary at a dinner party she was hosting. Jennifer came to me and said that Hilary was having some issues with dinner and getting the stove to work. Could I help? Hilary and I walked into the kitchen where Hilary showed me a bottle of Sangre del Toro wine that had a small plastic bull and a equally small folded stiff paper card attached to the neck of the bottle. The card had a recipe for beef cooked in Sangre del Toro wine. Hilary asked me if I understood the recipe. When I said yes, replied, ‘‘Oh good,’’ with amazing relief. Then, she left the kitchen to return to her guests. I cooked dinner.

In those few moments of having met Hilary, I wasn’t perplexed, I was happily part of the event.

Jennifer and I give dinner parties: sit down dinners with starters in one room, dinner in another, followed by a break before dessert. The parties are for between eight and eighteen people. When the stars and everyone’s travel schedules aligned, Hilary would be a guest. We quickly learned that these were Hilary’s dinner parties. This sounds as if Hilary would steal the party from us. No. It was very much like flowers turning towards the sun; slowly everyone would turn towards Hilary as the center. It was, quite literally, the natural order.

More than ten, or is it twelve years ago, it started. Hilary got lost driving. Things started changing. I would tell Jennifer, not to rush to a diagnosis, Hilary is older now and she was always like this – a bit ditzy. Then, at one dinner, Hilary became quiet. She knew she something was happening. It was tragic.

In time, Hilary’s awareness of her cognitive loss faded and she did not know anything was happening.

Hilary had a long term, in Hilary’s words,‘‘consort,’’ Don. Before I met Don, at a large, loud outdoor party in the woods somewhere, Hilary asked me and the gods why Jennifer was lucky enough to have me and she had Don. An odd question, for which I had no answer. I didn’t know what she meant.

The first time I met Don, he was an ass. He came to dinner; it was just the four us. He dominated the conversation, he tried to be funny but wasn’t and it was a disaster. I didn’t know any history.

As Hilary’s journey progressed, Hilary continued to live on her own, but needed more attention. Don implored Jennifer to send Hilary out, with the words, ‘‘if not now, when?’’ Don was a drunk and an alcoholic, but he was neither stupid, nor a fool. He knew what was coming and signed up for it. It was unclear whether he folded under the weight.

Hilary wouldn’t move without her cats, there were five at the time, I think. Don tried to negotiate the number of cats downward, but Hilary was intransigent. Don relented and Jennifer, Hilary and the five cats made the multi-day journey to Phoenix.

Hilary had left Don because of his drinking, but maintained the long-distance relationship across the years.

At some point, after Hilary moved to Phoenix, Don had some sort of health scare and went cold turkey. A warm, funny, caring, very smart man took the place of the Don I knew. I understood who Hilary was in love with. The story goes that Don’s doctor, in a slip, told Don that one drink wouldn’t hurt him and the descent into the bottle returned and gathered speed.

I’ve always wondered whether Don hid from the weight of caring for Hilary, or from the loss as the Hilary he knew sublimated into the ether. Jennifer would periodically, bring to Hilary to Seattle while Don recovered from his alcohol abuse. In March 2015, while Hilary was in Seattle with us, Don threw away his cell phone, which was never found, and continued his journey into the bottle and oblivion.

Hilary never knew Don had passed. She would in the first few months ask why Don hadn’t called, or where was he. That passed, and although Hilary would occasionally call Jennifer or me Don, she never asked again.

My mother once told me that as people age, and she meant to include possible dementia, they become more of who they are, as if the fluff of social constraints are shed. I later learned that dementia is random: the personality that emerges can be unrelated to the person who was. Hilary just became a softer version of the Hilary everyone loved.

As I have written, Jennifer and I became ‘‘the people with Hilary,’’ which reprised the Hilary of dinner parties: a sun that gravitationally attracted people into an orbit around her. Coming into a new dock, we would be greeted with people calling across marina welcoming Hilary. Last year in 2018, without Hilary, people who saw Caro Babbo came over to ask about Hilary.

As a landlord, Hilary had her edge. She wasn’t the softer Hilary that people met through Caro Babbo. Hilary was a slumlord by today’s light. While it was a different time, Hilary was known to enter the house of someone behind on their rent, put everything on the curb, keeping what she wanted. She answered those that protested the theft with, ‘‘when you pay your back rent, you’ll get it back.’’ The set of Le Creuset cookware in the Port Townsend house is said to have been acquired that way.

As immensely attractive as Hilary was when I met her, she had a magic her entire adult life. Her Atlanta plumber, Mitch Carey – Born Mitchell Moscowitz in Brooklyn – said to Jennifer once, ‘‘Your mother … she was easy on the eyes. I didn’t charge her for every other house. She never knew.’’

Which also gives insight into Hilary’s relationship with money: It was to be spent. Around the time I met Hilary, she refinanced the two houses she owned on Josephine Street in Atlanta and lived well on that money, traveling to Asia and collecting art and trinkets as she always did. That money ran out about the time she moved to Phoenix.

As much as Jennifer ever belonged to me, and I to her, Jennifer now belongs to me alone. She is an orphan with no parents. She is the top of her generational pyramid, with two matrilineal aunts; looking up from her children’s point of view, there is only Jennifer.

At 7:54pm, Atlanta time, Jennifer send a text: ‘‘30 breaths per minute, hard, normal is 12-15.’’ At 7:54pm, ‘‘37 bpm.’’

At 7:41 am, Atlanta time, Jennifer texted, ‘‘At 5:30, irregular, 29 bpm. 6:03, last breath. She is gone.’’

Rest in peace, dear Hilary.

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* Jennifer’s son, Owen, attended and graduated from RISD.