The men never met. I was … I wasn’t a link between them. I was the only person that knew both. I like to think I knew them well. I don’t think they knew me, even though each of them cared for me, in their own ways, ways I can feel but still cannot explain.

Both men spoke slowly, drawls purely Texan, one with a patience & probity of the ancients, the other with a gentle & lifelong braiding of Spanish & English.

Both were men of the outdoors. Both smokers. The corners of their eyes wrinkled by time – decades – in the sun, reading.

The professor earned a reputation as a grad student for basking in the sun, Loeb edition nearby, overlooking the only hill in the town.

The postman four hours away, uniformed, at ease, moved from the curb to the door and back again to the open door of his truck.

Both men lived & worked in a limited orbit deep with meaning, deep with people who knew them for years, for decades.

They died within days of each other. Each loss jarred me. What was he to me? What was I to him?

G-d forgive me, I truly mourned only one.

I was told that he had learned, so late in life but not too late, to think deeply. He connected with family. He lived a new kind of joy, one that you could see only if you had known him as we had. He hoped he had little to regret. From the pulpit, his son implored us, Forgive yourselves – as he had.