I love all the get-togethers with S's families — for birthdays, holidays, no reason at all. True, it's a little weird that they plan events where their mom has to make nice with their dad and his new wife, who, truth be told, wrecked the 30-year marriage a couple of decades ago. But I guess the plan is to invite everyone and hope they all act like grownups. Which they usually do.

And my best friend L, who got this whole ball rolling with S and me, is the glue that holds this family together. The dutiful daughter-in-law who can make these gatherings work. Indeed, she was the only one who could pull off maintaining friendships with both Ex and me.

Years ago, when she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of breast cancer, she took it like a champ through surgery, through chemo, through relapse. She never complained about losing her hair: "These wigs are nicer than my hair ever was, and easier to care for," she said. When it moved into her liver, she was similarly undeterred. "This is like any other chronic disease, like diabetes," she would say. "I've got it under control."

Which is what she maintained whenever we had one of our girlie lunches that we would grab whenever we could. And she looked great at that last lunch. It had been a busy summer: I was headed to a family reunion in South Carolina; she was off for a similar visit in California. We had had our kids at the same time, so we gossiped about our high-school seniors and their hopes for college, how the older ones were planning careers. How those child-rearing years just flew by.

By the time we returned from our respective trips, the cancer had moved into her brain. Impossibly, she was still upbeat. She planned yet another family gathering, and with her face swollen from her treatments, her body inconceivably thinner, she chatted animatedly about her new doctors, the prognosis, her future.

Three weeks later was another family gathering, one that she had not planned. Around her bed in the hospice, all her family and friends, all the exes and nexts, saying our last goodbyes.

The family will never be the same.