A friendship that trumps age and ills.

Byline: Stacey Burling

PHILADELPHIA _ Where was Rosemary?

By 7:35, seven of the eight members of the bridge club had assembled at Joan Weidler's immaculate house in Marlton, N.J.

With so much going on, they had barely been playing these last months. They'd had all the summer vacations to juggle, and then Connie Briglia's illness had made it hard to think of having fun. She was still in a rehabilitation hospital, and most of the recent news hadn't been good. Joan didn't feel comfortable driving at night anymore and was saying she might have to stop playing for the winter. Rosemary Ricketti, a bridge fanatic who is a member of four clubs, was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. She still played well but sometimes had trouble finding her way to the games.

The group was worried about Connie, worried about Rosemary, worried about itself.

"We've kind of fallen apart," Ginger Meillier, one of the founding members, had said before the meeting.

The group's bridge game has been a fixture in its members' lives for nearly half a century. Watching the game now is a poignant lesson in friendship, aging, and gracefully playing the hand you are dealt.

That night, it was stormy and rain glared from the black streets. Joan Weidler lives in a big 55-and-older community where all the houses look alike and all the streets are named after flowers.

Two of the club members had offered to drive Rosemary there. But at the last minute, Rosemary, a cheerfully stubborn woman who used to drive a school bus for a living, called and said no. "It's raining too hard. I'd rather do it by myself," she'd told Barbara Cerquitella.

"She called me, too," Ginger told the others.

"Does Rosemary have a cell phone?" asked AnnMarie Reca.

"Yeah, but she doesn't turn it on," Joan said.

Nervously, they settled in to wait.

The ladies of the club started meeting in 1959, when they were young women with young children living in Kingston Estates in Cherry Hill, Pa. Like a classic rock band, the lineup has changed over the years as some…