Document Type

Teacher, Colleague, Mentor

Abstract

“You never know when it’s the last time.” For sixty years, from a chance meeting when we were undergraduates at Columbia until his last days, the incomparable Richard Taruskin gave me the great gift of his friendship. I never knew why, still don’t, but I reveled in every moment we shared. After I decamped for Brown ten years later, and he eventually for Berkeley, our meetings grew fewer and a cherished correspondence (those from its last months excerpted here) filled the gaps. COVID-19 put finis to our reunions. “The last time” would come and go with all too little warning, leaving only his warm, wonderful, maddening, enchanting words to me over his last year and a half on this earth.