Hard Weekend.
There only several things that I would be willing to lay down my life for: family, several very close friends and my country. Ryan Baskin is one of those friends that I would do anything that he ask me to do because I trust him so much that I know he would never ask me to do anything that didn’t have to be done. He’s one of a very few people that I trust completely and with my life. So it’s with great sadness that I learned of the death of Ryan’s father last Friday morning. Ryan’s dad was a wonderful man. He was probably the most intelligent man I’ve ever met, but he was also one of the most down to earth people I’ve ever met too. As one of his friends described him he was as comfortable talking to an Astrophysicist as he was a garbage collector and those people were as comfortable talking to him. In talking with one of my friends on Friday I told him that I wasn’t sure where Mr. Baskin would go. I wasn’t sure what his beliefs were and for that reason alone I didn’t know if he would go to heaven, though I know for a fact that he deserved the best.
I realized while sitting at the funeral service on Monday afternoon that you tell how a person was by the people they surround themselves with. If you never met Mr. Baskin you could know him through his friends as a very caring, loving, intelligent and extremely humorous man! In my opinion if those were his only good attributes (they weren’t) that should be enough to get him through the doors to heaven. Mr. Baskin’s daughter said that he would never be idolized by Marvel comics as a hero, but he was her hero. To her knowledge there was no one on this planet that had a bad thing to say about him and she can think of no better way to define a hero than that. I think that’s truth. If you can walk through life and never make an enemy you’ve accomplished a lot.
Over the course of the weekend I realized that the saying, “The clock of life is wound but once and no man knows when his will stop,” is so important to think about. Life is short! I spent a lot of time this weekend putting out fires that I had started myself. Accidental yes, but regardless of cause the damage was done.