Neither man forgot the other, though they didn’t see each other again until they met at the same Zen center in 2002. Mr. Campbell suggested that Mr. Paley Ellison bring Mimi to Beth Israel’s hospice. He also asked Mr. Paley Ellison to join him for coffee. They ended up on a bench at Father Demo Square in the West Village.

“He seduced me with his big smile and his shiny eyes,” Mr. Campbell said. But after some getting-to-know-you banter, it became clear to both that the connection ran deeper. Mr. Paley Ellison asked Mr. Campbell the most recent book he had read, for example, and out came the answer “Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey,” by David Schneider. Mr. Campbell had just read the same book, about a man’s journey from drug addiction to creating the first Zen hospice house.

“Can you imagine meeting someone for the first time and being excited by talk about death and dying?” said Mr. Campbell, a bearded, magnetic and lighthearted person with a slight British accent. He grew up in Birmingham, England, then traveled the world, eventually settling in New York in the mid-1980s for work.

“One of the things we talked about on that bench is how important it is to take care of people in your life and in your community,” said Mr. Paley Ellison. Both had recently ended relationships with other people and were contentedly single, preparing to ordain as Soto Zen Buddhist monks. Mr. Paley Ellison was ordained in 2002, Mr. Campbell in 2005.