Mr. Cott objected. “I have a rather close woman friend here,” he said.

“You can’t name her, though,” Mr. Leedom said.

“Yes, I can.”

“You couldn’t this morning,” Mr. Leedom said. “What’s her name?”

Mr. Leedom continued. “We’re living in an institution, there’s no question about that,” he said. “I can’t say there are pros. The pros are that it’s a lovely facility. But the fact that they’re all seniors is a fact you accept. You know that when you enter. One of the hard things — people are reluctant to get too close to someone, because you know they must die. It’s a temporary relationship with everybody.”

The last time I spoke with them, they had just come from lunch at the Museum of Modern Art. It was a crowded day in late August, and there had been a line, but the restaurant staff let the two older men with canes go to the front.

The museum itself was too crowded to move in; that atmosphere, like the hurry-up-and-wait behavior of Mr. Cott’s medical team, which had changed his surgery date several times, made them feel as if they were in someone else’s hands. “They’re the ones in charge,” Mr. Leedom said.

The two men still marvel at their lives together. It had never occurred to them that they might spend 58 years as a couple, with hopes and expectations of more. Mr. Cott mentioned an old girlfriend with whom he was still in contact. Her husband was now in hospice.

Life evolves. “I’ve had many relationships,” he said. “Nothing as enduring or important as with him. But life has been very full, and wonder-full.”