https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY

This one is one that I dust off and listen to, from time to time, honoring that beautiful last unicorn, Bob.... the brother I almost had, and did not deserve, but I was blessed with his friendship regardless... it was a song valued by him, and the words, when taken intently, intensely, can be so easily applied to Bob...

He was like The Boxer, standing strong, defiant to the last, sharing his love of life and trying to help us understand things that only he had a good grasp of, but that he so desperately wanted us to learn, to understand, to be recipient to....

Bob was like that - he had a knowledge and he held the value for but a moment of time, then he would throw it out to the masses, such as we were, in hopes that we would receive it and wrap our minds and hearts around it, and hold it, because he was so very alone at times, and sorely wanted, needed, to know he was not alone always.

He had that way about him; you could see knowledge in his countenance, he carried himself with a quiet sort of beauty, dignity his cloak, his mind furnishing the backdrop to his life, to your life, to all of life, because he could, for no other reason than that.

Well, also because he wanted to do that. It was a sort of tilting at the windmills of life for him, and he had no choice, it seemed, but to do that daily, hourly, mentally girded by his experiences and it was obvious that he needed that - he needed to know that he was able to reach others... he was very capable.

I appreciate the fact that I was his friend, that he consented to be mine... I learned from him. I was enabled by him. I was honored to share his space and time here. He knew, more than we could ever understand, the value of what he was about — he had silver and gold in his mind and in his words, and we who listened, we who turned the words this way and that way, as we struggled to understand things beyond us; we, who heard him, we were made so very wealthy as a result.

He was a painter of life, we were his canvas, his colors and brush strokes were part of his life, his tears, his heartbeat. I wish I had the words needed to depict, properly, the wonder that was Bob.

How can anyone receive the holy grail of life and not be so shocked and newly enamored of such a person as to be transfixed and made to stand still in awe and appreciation of what was just experienced in his presence.

Yea, Bob was one to cross the river with. He was always willing to take you with him down the roads and paths he roamed, and it was up to you to gather what was important from those travels. I miss those moments,

and I am eternally grateful for the bits of time and knowledge I saved from our conversations.