Tootsie giggled even though the tears, stained black, kept coming. “You need to turn up your oxygen.”

Midge’s giggle was barely audible, but her weary eyes glittered. “We had good times. Take a little nap with me.” Her eyes closed again, and Tootsie kicked off her shoes and crawled up into the bed beside her.

Midge reached for Tootsie’s hand and held it tightly. “Twinkle, twinkle,” she said.

“Little star,” Tootsie sang the next two words of the lullaby. When they had been little girls and were allowed to have a sleepover, they had sung that song just before they went to sleep at night. Gloria never could carry a tune and sounded like a toad-frog, but Tootsie and Midge never said a word. Tootsie wondered if God had given Gloria a beautiful singing voice in the next life. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that God would let Midge breathe easy and run and play when she got beyond the pearly gates.

Memories played through Tootsie’s mind in living Technicolor as she lay there beside her oldest friend, holding her hand as she tried to breathe. The three of them had been inseparable from her earliest memories. When Gloria died, she and Smokey had been stationed in Germany, and there was no way she could come home for the funeral.

Midge’s eyes popped open. “Gloria is here!”

“Honey, Gloria has been gone for years. Remember she had that brain aneurysm?” Tootsie said.

“I know that,” Midge whispered. “But she’s right there at the end of the bed.”

A cold shiver made its way slowly down Tootsie’s spine. Suddenly, she realized how lucky she was that Smokey had simply sat down in his chair after Sunday dinner and was gone when she went to wake him up to watch the ball game with her. He hadn’t had to suffer like this. One minute he was there; the next he was gone. The shock had been almost more than she could bear, but she wouldn’t have wished him back if he had to endure what Midge was going through.

Sissy came in with two pills. “Time for the pain medicine.”

“Don’t want it. Gloria has come for me.” Midge’s voice was barely a whisper now.

“Don’t be silly. You know what the hospice nurse said. If you let the pain get away from you, then it’s twice as hard to get it under control.” Sissy held them out to her.

Midge shook her head. “No. I want a clear head when I go with Gloria.”

“Okay, but tonight you’re going to hurt,” Sissy fussed.

“Tonight I’ll be in paradise.” Midge squeezed Tootsie’s hand.

Who did Smokey see just before he went to sleep that Sunday afternoon? Tootsie wondered. Was it one of his old army teammates, or maybe Luke’s father, who was his youngest brother? She hoped that when it was her turn to go, it would be Smokey who was in the room with her.

I’ll be there for you, darlin’. His voice was so clear in her head that she turned to see if he was with her now.

Midge drifted off again, and Tootsie let her mind wander back to the girls. Was Carmen out chopping more wood again? What would happen if she swung wrong and got a cut? They didn’t even have a vehicle to get them into town unless they drove the motor home. She wasn’t sure if Luke had even left the keys so the girls could use it in case of an emergency. She was so busy worrying about Carmen that she didn’t realize Midge had taken her hand away until she caught movement in her peripheral vision.

She jerked her head around to see Midge stretching out her fingers and then closing them, as if she were holding someone’s hand. Then with a slight shudder, she took her last breath. Midge’s hand fell back to the bed, and Tootsie covered it with hers.

“I guess you and God really did have an agreement,” she whispered as she slung her legs off the side of the bed. She found Sissy sitting in the kitchen washing a few dishes.

“She’s gone,” Tootsie said.

Sissy sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. “Is it wrong of me to be relieved?”

Tootsie wrapped her arms around the younger woman and said, “No, darlin’. She’s at peace now, and I really believe that Gloria came to usher her out of this world. She was holding my hand until the last minute, then she reached out toward someone and took her last breath.”

Sissy began to sob. “But that don’t make giving her up any easier, does it?”

“Whether it’s sudden or a long, painful journey, it’s never easy to let them go.” Tootsie cried with her. “Let’s go sit with her a few minutes before we call the funeral home.”

Sissy clasped Tootsie’s hand in hers, and together they went into the room and sat in a couple of folding chairs beside the bed.

“She looks so peaceful,” Sissy whispered. “Like she’s just sleeping.”

“She didn’t fight going,” Tootsie told her. “Have you made arrangements?”

“She did all that two months ago. No funeral, just a graveside service. That’s to be tomorrow morning. She hated the idea of embalming, and she wanted a plain wooden box. I’m to line it with the quilt our mama gave her for her wedding present and put her in her wedding dress. It’s just a little blue dress with white pearl buttons, and I’m to make sure that the pillow under her head has a case on it with embroidery that I did,” Sissy answered.

“Then that’s exactly what you should do. Flowers?”

“She wanted pink carnations like the corsage that Ralph bought for her on their wedding day,” Sissy said.

“Can I please buy those for her casket piece?” Tootsie had to swallow hard to get the words around the lump in her throat.

“She’d like that.” Sissy started to weep again.

Tootsie pulled a tissue from the container and handed it to her.

“I’ll be lost without her,” Sissy said. “She’s all that was left except me, and yet I’m glad that she’s not suffering anymore. I feel guilty for that.”

“You’ve heard of the seven steps of grief, right?” Tootsie asked.

“The hospice nurse gave us all the points when she started with us,” Sissy said.

“I’m only a few miles away, Sissy. I can be here in twenty minutes if you need me or if you want to come up to the house and spend some time away, either one.” Tootsie grabbed a tissue and blew her nose.

“Gloria couldn’t sing, and you sound like a three-hundred-pound trucker when you blow your nose or sneeze,” Sissy giggled. “Midge said that just yesterday when you called and said you were coming today instead of tomorrow.”