240827 A life Well Lived

This picture shows part of the aircrew I was in during 1965. I am in the back row, second from left. I was 20 years old.

I’ve had a good life.

I’ve had ups and downs, as we all do, but overall a life I would not trade for any other life.
The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote: “Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”
I greatly admire Tennyson, but I disagree with Tennyson on his better to have loved and lost.

Had I never met and loved Joyce, I would not be living with the hole in my heart that I still suffer from nearly 3 years later. I would not be sitting alone in an apartment we shared until she passed away. I would not be thinking about her day after day, week after week, year after year.
Had I never loved anyone, I would never have lost.

I have lived an exciting life, done things few have ever done, seen things few ever will.
I flew with an air crew off the coast of Vietnam. We flew into Vietnam once for refueling, while there we were caught in a mortar attack on the air field there. I flew through one of the worst typhoons ever recorded in the Pacific and came out the other side intact. I was nearly murdered twice by angry Fillipinos; staring at the business end of a US made .45 caliber poitol pointed at me did not make for a good day. What they were angry about, I’ll never know. I could have been killed twice on the USS Kitty Hawk flight deck. I walked into a video store one time in the middle of a robbery and had a pistol aimed at me as the robber told me not to move.

With those experiences in my past, it’s easy to see how different my life is living alone in an apartment Joyce and I once shared.
I think I’ve just told you about events I never told Joyce. I didn’t want her to worry about me at the time those things were happening.