1/04/2008

Only The Dead

Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I've enjoyed in my life. So if you're up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me.

Major Andrew Olmsted, a frontline soldier who blogged for small venues and large, died yesterday in Iraq. He was killed in the line of duty. These are his last public words; they appeared in the Rocky Mountain News, to which he sometimes contributed. This is his goodbye letter, which he wrote this past July, with orders it be published if he lost his life in battle.

I read many of his writings, always taken by their warm intelligence and easy wisdom. Now, more than ever, these numerous blurbs are worth hunting down and taking to heart.

I lived my life better than some, worse than others, and I like to think that the world was a little better off for my having been here. Not very much, but then, few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history's Green Monster. I would be lying if I didn't admit I would have liked to have done more, but it's a bit too late for that now, eh?

1 comment:

Jeff Hudecek said...

His final post makes this especially tragic. One day you're helping hand out gifts, the next you're being ambushed. What a loss.