All Men Die; Few Men Live

An open letter to my husband.

Written March 9, 2020

I want to write something beautiful today, as I remember your life and what it meant to the people around you.

Inevitably, it will make some people sad, even if I say it is not written to be sad. I’m officially saying I don’t want people to be sad.

We had a great love and the good far outweighs the pain. Lately I’ve been thinking about the great irony of it all. Isn’t it ironic that I gave you my all, so much so that these days, I predominantly find myself giving only in 280 characters or in just smaller pieces of myself. And isn’t it ironic that you invested so much in fixing me, that in the end I was more broken than ever? But most ironic of all, is that in your dying, I feel compelled to share with others, how you lived.

One of my favorite things to do was to watch you from across the room as you engaged with others. You had this amazing ability to make a person feel like a million dollars. It didn’t matter to you how smart, or rich, or skinny, or rough, or polished, a person was. You spoke with them all equally. More important, you listened to them all equally.

I remember our Christmas parties that grew from just a small gathering, to almost 150 people. I remember when people had conflicting standing parties and each year we would switch the date of ours, so they could attend every other year. I forget why we stopped doing that. But found it telling that the people that “had to go” to their other parties, slowly began blowing off the other parties to be at THE party.

You insisted it was because of my cooking, but I knew it was because you spent time speaking to every single person that came. They came because they got their Freddie fix. It’s true. I know because I was stalking your every move. Your infectious smile, mischievous grin and twinkling eyes all making someone feel like they lived part of your journey, even if it was only vicariously.

I know you never believed me when I told you this. You were so humble. The fact that you didn’t know, and refused to believe this, is the very thing that made you so special.

When people would ask you how you were, you would reply, “fantastic.” And you meant it, even though the Parkinson’s made your body rigid and painful to move. It made you drool, shuffle, speak slowly, eat sloppily and not be able to do some simple tasks. But you always stayed positive. I think what people — what I — loved most was your determination to not let it stop you.

You led by example. How many times did we sit on the mountain with a group of paragliders, decades your junior, and you were the first one off? We joked about how two of our friends broke their wrists and the guy with the Parkinson’s had not a scratch. That was until you broke your wrist a few weeks later, of course. But even then, you remained upbeat. You were just thankful it was stupidity, and not the Parkinson’s, that grounded you.

I am amazed at how many lives you’ve touched. To this day, I hear new and old stories about you.

This past January in Costa Rica I heard from not one, but three people, about how you touched their lives. One was your acquaintance, Huber, the Cuban refugee. He’s a few years older than you and, like you, started paragliding later in life. He remembered you sitting in a chair one day on launch. It must have been that last season, after you finally gave up flying. That’s the only reason you would be sitting in a chair, rather than in your harness. He remembers you being such a nice man and having a very pleasant conversation. He then goes on to tell me, he didn’t know who you were. It wasn’t until later that he found out he was talking to “Grampa Ninja” as you were affectionately nicknamed.

The following day I was introduced to a teenage boy who just had to meet me. He lives by the soccer field where you would land when you flew from his town. Gerald, 16, recounted how when he was little he got to know you. Did you know he was in awe of you? Dozens of pilots fly and land there. But he just had to meet me to tell me how highly he thought of you, five years after your death.

Lastly, a day or so later I was talking with Beth on launch. She’s your protégé, Zion’s, girlfriend. She’s heard a lot about you. I told her how people were totally mesmerized by you. Remember the two guys that stayed at the Bed and Breakfast that last year? The one man, Leif, was totally taken by your adventurous life and stories. He kept saying how you reminded him of his dad, who was somewhat famous in aviation, and how he wanted you both to meet. The next night I stopped by Raffa’s. While I was leaving, Beth was arriving with a middle aged man. He ran over to my car and said, “I thought you looked familiar the other day. My friend and I stayed with you guys right before Grampa passed away. We were shocked to hear.” I asked about Leif and it turned out that he had just recently died in a fluke kayak accident. I expressed my condolences and shock and said, “I was just talking to someone about him the other day,” realizing then it was Beth.

In the course of a few days I heard three times how you left a lasting impression on people. What also struck me was the difference in ages. You connected with a guy older than you, from a totally different culture, two middle aged men, and a boy who was probably 10 years old when you met.

We say some people are bigger than life. That’s an odd thing to say. I mean, what is bigger than life? I think they mean to say, some people live big. You lived big. I think back to that last Christmas party, when Nate came with his mom and dad. I still picture you asking him what his tattoo said. He said, “All men die; few men live.” I can still see that mischievous grin on your face as you gave him a gentle nod.

At the beginning I said I didn’t want people to be sad when they read this. What do I want then? I want people to read about you and say, I want some of what he’s got. Because the world could use a little more Fred.

PS. I’m pretty sure people didn’t follow my instructions and are sad. Stupid people. So I’m going to share with them some of my favorite photos of you. Maybe that will cheer them up.

Making it look easy.

The Ninjas, with you front and center. (Click here to read the story behind the name.)

You hardly ever drank, but I finally forgive you for this one.

So whose idea was it to build a big penguin hot air balloon to fly ice cores off Mt. Sajama anyway??

The ice cream party was for the kids as a thank you for washing the car. Yet you somehow snagged an invite.

Remember you helped Tom with his very first flight off the Caldera site? Remember everyone else — himself included — was scared for him?

Remember when I broke the news to my family that we got married, and I made you do a “photo shoot” at Buca di Beppo’s to show how you were embracing the Italians?

Ok, if you, the reader are not laughing at this one, I can’t help you. And if you write a comment about how sad this is, I’m going to block you. I would, however, love to hear if you’ve been inspired to live big.