Let me describe a typical day in the life of Cleve Gray. Let’s say it’s in the late 1970s. Both our sons are safely tucked away at the University of Pennsylvania, and for the first time we are alone for months at a time. We rise shortly before eight, impelled by the needs of the poodle who slept at the foot of our bed. Cleve quickly gets dressed and has his breakfast of toast and Hu-Kwa tea while beginning to read his New York Times. As I come in for my own breakfast routine, he proffers his cheek. "Morning kiss?" he says. I comply. "Be sure to have a decent, nourishing breakfast," he orders, wagging his finger at me as he leaves the room; and after a short session at his desk, he goes to his studio. I do not go into my own work space — Cleve’s "old" studio, which I joyously inherited when he abandoned it — until 12 or so, when all household chores are behind me. We lunch separately and do not really see each other until dinnertime, which we take on trays on our laps, watching the evening news. We quietly discuss the day’s work. "I think I did a good picture," he says occasionally, or else, every few months, "I’m having the worst trouble with a painting. I’d like you to come and look at it tomorrow." Unless there’s a family crisis, I never enter his studio without this kind of specific invitation. When I come in to comment on a troublesome painting, he turns down his music and listens to me attentively, then gives me a kiss and a "Thank you, honey" before I leave.

Ours was a tranquil, workaholic life. If we could afford it, we traveled yearly. In the 1970s, a journey up the Nile with our kids and our close friend Dick Avedon, whom we met as we lay side by side on the floor of the US Senate protesting the Vietnam War, was our most memorable trip. In 1987, when Cleve had open-heart surgery and his entire pace began to slow, crossing the Atlantic became too stressful. He had a passion for the ocean, and we experimented with various Caribbean islands — settling in the last few years on Anguilla, where Cleve enjoyed the finest swimming he’d ever had.

It was in Anguilla, however, in 2002, that a truly severe degeneration of Cleve’s eye-sight began. Upon coming home, we were told that he had suffered a stroke of the optic nerve that deprived him of all peripheral vision and greatly altered his sense of balance. He couldn’t fly anymore, nor could he tackle the surf, and he could only go into his beloved ocean — we were now limited to taking a train to some Florida destination — if helped by a lifeguard, which he found humiliating. His universe was closing in. He could read books only with the greatest difficulty, which depressed him to no end.

And yet, and yet: what is amazing is that this decade of limited vision, the decade in which he became most obsessively addicted to his studio, brought forth some of his most powerful, original paintings. The works of Cleve’s last four years in particular, executed with oil sticks (which he’d turned to because he found them easier on his arthritic hand than brushes) were the best of his career; and the little joy he experienced in those last years is that he knew they were his best, and that they were being snapped up by a whole new generation of young collectors. "Being half blind, you only see the essentials," he’d explain, "and that’s all that matters." Otherwise, he grew increas-ingly haunted by his dread of total blindness, and by the death of his closest friends. Barney had gone long ago, in the late ’60s. In 2004 came the death of Dick Avedon. Dick had been on assignment for The New Yorker in San Antonio, Texas. Showering to prepare for a noon photo shoot, he slipped and fell, hitting his head on the rim of the tub. He had been taking large doses of Coumadin, as Cleve had, as a cure for arterial fibrillations. After a few recurring moments of consciousness, he fell into a coma, and died four days later.

Our great mutual friend Adam Gopnik broke the news to us by phone. Cleve came into my room, tears in his eyes, and said, "I want to die just like Dick, on my way to work, on my way to the studio."

Two months later, on the morning of December 7, 2004, Cleve, coming out of the house on his way to his beloved studio, slipped and fell on the year’s first ice, and knocked his head badly on the ground. I was in New York, and he did not make a big deal of it when I made my habitual lunchtime call. "I’ve just taken some Tylenol. I’ll stay in the house this afternoon and skip the studio," he said resignedly.