Today marks a decade since your departure... 10 solid years since you shed your mortal coil and left us here to fend off the wolves and find our respective way through so much morass. But I am grateful for having the most exemplary navigator, teacher, and mentor a man could hope to have.
Clearly, your earthly obligations, whatever they may have been were completely met and "then some".
Your exit seems timely in so many ways as the world despite always changing, seems to be rearranging into increasingly unfamiliar tangents and trajectories. Perhaps that's just my middle age angst or ennui... But I suspect much of what I experience holds objective merit and to summarize, I reflect upon the storehouse of memories and recollections from the good 20 years under your 'tutelage' and it still serves me well. Can you believe that since knowing you as a boy in his mid-teens, I myself am nearing 50 years old? Yes, in a mere couple of years "plus", I'll reach that mark and then perhaps, "Onward, Forward" further from there. We'll see.
I post this testimonial as an ongoing assertion to your timeless influence and benevolent light, cast upon all who had the good fortune of knowing you. So much has changed in the past decade, I suspect you would find much of the world completely unrecognizable. But then again, your wisdom and intelligence would quickly see the eternal forces at work and play that underlie such and you would {if I may be so presumptuous}, likely kick back in that recliner of yours, pull your feet upon the ottoman, and quip "It's all a bunch of baloney, Danny!"... Before or after taking a prime puff of one of your "prized" CVS cigars, no doubt. The musing and much of "The World" itself, reduced to an ephemeral puff of smoke while REAL LIFE is experienced and undertaken in the sanctum of your "hallowed halls"... Porch, Living Room, or Kitchen, even.
Time marches on always but I always Remember. "Always In Memory".
And Thank You for the memories and everything good and wholesome that extenuates from such. Your spirit remains with me.