Sometimes the best people among us are the ones who suffer the most

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

July 2005

I've never been a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, although the quote above from "A Farewell to Arms" is one of two by Hemingway that I love.

I expect to live a long time, largely because I am neither very good, very gentle or very brave. I suppose the world has broken me more than once in nearly 65 years, but there will be no special hurry to kill me.

Nearly every reach I've made for a dream has come up short, and if I'm not quite done reaching, my arms seem shorter than they ever were.

But my lovely wife Nicole is good, gentle and brave. She did work that really mattered and she was one of the top two or three people in the world in her field. I remember her telling me once -- proud and a little shy at the same time -- that there were concepts she understood that no more than a couple of other people could grasp.

She spent several decades working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If you're not familiar with JPL, it's the space science equivalent of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the 1927 Yankees and CBS News back in the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.



She didn't just work there. She climbed the ladder and earned the title of senior research scientist, which meant that even within JPL, she was one of the best.

Of course, when you're that high up in the work world, there are all sorts of pressures, from the work itself to jealous co-workers who can't stop believing they would be really happy if they could just have your job instead of their own.

And often, even if you are good, gentle and brave, it gets to you. Some give it all up, while others fight on even as life gets more and more difficult. The picture above was taken at the beginning of a three-day backpacking trip we took in 2005 in the Sierra Nevadas. It was early July near the southern end of the Sierras, but there were several places where we had to trek across snow fields.

Virgile at the pass

Nicole and I and our son Virgile climbed to Kearsarge Pass  at 11,709 feet above sea level and then hiked down the other side about 500 feet into Kings Canyon National Park, where we spent two nights. For me at that time, the trip was nearly impossible. My son carried my backpack as well as his own for probably a third of the trip up.

Of course he was 20 at the time. He's 29 now and he does Ironman Triathlons.

But Nicole was great too, even though 2005 was a horrible year for her. She never needed help with her gear and she never requested additional rest stops, or longer ones when we did stop.

Nine years later, though, it has been difficult for her. Two spinal surgeries, a foot surgery and five broken ribs, all in the last two years or so. Other problems as well, but I won't go into those. We're both getting older, and believe me, there are times I wish with all my heart we could go back to the late summer of 1992, when we met, fell in love and married, all in the space of less than two months.

November 1992

It was a time when she was so happy she actually skipped as we were walking across the street to a movie theatre on Wilshire Boulevard, a time when she probably said the most wonderful thing to me anyone has ever said.

At the time we started dating, I was still seeing someone else. After our third date, she said she knew I was dating another woman too, and she didn't think that she would be my ultimate choice.

"I want to keep trying, though, because I think you're worth it."

I never went out with anyone else again. I figured we would have a wonderful life and that we would never have difficulties greater than we could handle.

Which brings me full circle to the other Hemingway quote I love.

"Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?"