This might read like an obituary which is entirely appropriate because in a few months it will be! I only 'met' Alan Sullivan earlier this year on his blog, http://www.seablogger.com/, and I wish now that I had come across him sooner. He exemplifies the qualities Kipling urged on us all in his poem "If". He is homosexual and thus these lines will probably resonate:
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
He has made money and lost money in a life that he seems to have lived to the full ...
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
and now he is in the final stages of leukemia and admits his doubts as to whether he will reach 2009 ...
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same . . .
which is exactly what he does, with stoicism and fortitude. I should add, and I suspect he would agree with me, that in this, the final test, his courage is not singular, it is shared round the world by people of all races and conditions who are forced to face directly their own mortality and who do so with as much dignity and bravery as they can muster in an always amazing tribute to the human spirit.
I feel privileged to share Alan Sullivan's thoughts and feelings and when my time comes I can only hope for even a little of his strength of character.
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