Our friend and neighbor Marvin J. Berkman died on Monday. I suppose that he had been sick since before we moved in next door, but somehow he never seemed ill, until suddenly he was. And once I had gotten to know him a little, the thought that he might be mortal never occurred to me.

In his 80s — his 80s! — Marv was in two or three bands, practicing and performing regularly on guitar; taking a writing class; driving all over town in his decrepit Volvo (and occasionally to other towns); scouring the thrift stores for useful items; grocery shopping and cooking; helping a friend keep her Manitou Springs house from sliding off its hillside; holding a position of some authority at the church he and his sweetheart Judy attended; doing some casual woodworking . . . I was 30 years younger than the man, and I got tired just watching him.

Listening to him was something else altogether. That was never tiresome. Marv was a self-described saloon musician, a gig he took up as a teen-ager in Chicago, and the stories he could (and did) tell. He played for gangsters, swells and Studs Terkel, among others; served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Aleutian Islands during World War II; worked in jewelry and optometry; and somewhere picked up jackleg carpentry.

The other students in his writing class apparently considered him exotic, as did his fellow congregants at the Methodist church he and Judy attended (Marv was a Jew). He was a storyteller who would talk to cats if no bipeds were handy, among them our Turkish, who likes Marv and Judy’s yard better than our own. And if he occasionally repeated a tale, well, so do I. His were worth listening to more than once.

We shared a driveway and a garage, and other things as well. If Marv was braising some corned beef, a chunk would find its way across the driveway to our house. If I was simmering a pot of chili con carne, a bowl would wind up on Marv’s table. Herself helped Marv wrestle with his balky Windows laptop, and I shoveled their walks come winter; he helped us navigate the health-care maze. Living as he did with diabetes and cancer, he’d had plenty of experience in that arena.

But cancer has even more time on the job, and it gradually began to get the upper hand. Judy did her best for him, but Marv came to need more care than she could provide, and he finally agreed to enter a nursing home.

That lasted about seven hours — as is often the case, the place was a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare — and after hollering for help Marv was transferred first to Memorial Hospital’s oncology unit, then to Pikes Peak Hospice, where he had once volunteered a couple days a week, providing the soundtrack for many a final episode as a hall-strolling troubadour.

It was a fine, large room, and he was among friends there. The staff remembered Marv fondly, dropping by in ones and twos to pay their respects; a quick chat, a hug, a kiss, and then tears in the hallway. “You never let them see you cry,” said one. “But if you don’t cry, there’s something the matter. With you.” Another told Judy that it was an honor to be allowed to care for Marv during his last days. A third was stunned to learn that Marv had returned not to play, but to die.

We weren’t there when Marv finally passed on. I took my cue from Marv’s reaction upon awakening from a doze to seeing a half-dozen of us, friends and family, camped out in his hospice room, eyeing him like buzzards in a tree. “Oh, no,” he muttered. The old saloon musician didn’t want an audience for his final performance.

• Links:

A short video of Marv playing guitar.

One of Marv’s stories.