I understand it intellectually, scientifically, from what I've learned and studied and thought. But he knew it emotionally and instinctively, and I think he knew it all along. He understood the old cliché "Life is a journey, not a destination" without ever having articulated it in a sentence. I knew the quotation by heart and repeated it to myself every day, but I couldn't ever bring myself to actually believe it no matter how hard I tried.

He was a man who had killed a dozen men in armed combat, who had seen his whole company wiped out in a friendly fire incident, and who had spent a year as a hunted animal, in constant danger and forced to endanger everyone he loved who gave him a meal and shelter for a night, and I never once saw him exhibit even the slightest cruelty or anger to man or beast. And he was always laughing, usually at himself and an imponderable, clumsy universe that just couldn't seem to get it right. Whenever he was stressed, in crisis, or in trouble and I happened to be nearby, he would throw a glance at me, and roll his eyes so only I could see it, as if to share a little joke with me "Shit, here I go again, another bad day at the office."

I see and reason in the abstract, intellectually, and navigate by chart, compass and sextant. He understood life at the molecular level and flew by the seat of his pants. And he died a cruel, long and painful death, bitching and cursing all the way, but never with self-pity, and always with humor, dignity and courage..........ER