On Wednesday, December 24, 2003
he went cross country skiing with his friend Andy near the Wisconsin River. While skiing, they talked. The conversation was warm and half-amused. He knew the afternoon would become inflated and romanticized in his memory, that like all good memories it would assume dimensions beyond its mere fact, that he would ascribe meaning, use it as an example of the purity of friendship, the hope inherent in human relations, but in truth it was just two friends skiing and talking on a cold December afternoon in northern Wisconsin. This is the best life has to offer. It need not be spectacular or earth-shattering, in need not be self-conscious. Life at its most beautiful is utterly ordinary and irrevocably commonplace.