He was my best friend for almost 40 years.
His health has not been good recently, but the end came quickly. We had lunch together on Saturday and then visited a gun shop. When I dropped him off at his home we shook hands good-bye because he was planning to go out of town. He woke up late that night in severe pain and called an ambulance. His daughter, Dana, and I met at Holy Cross Hospital Sunday morning, and I stayed until mid-afternoon. Although still in pain at that time, he was lucid, but the calls from Dana later started to sound pessimistic. She went home to Southern Maryland in the evening, but the hospital called her back to come in the middle of the night. She called me, and we were there together until he died at 11 am.
Marv and I became friends when I was in my early 20's and he was in his late 30's, but he never talked down to me and always treated me as an equal. Since I retired 9 months ago we spent a lot of time together and never ran out of things to talk about. Lately he became interested in studying the history of the English language and, knowing I remembered much of the history I majored in long ago at college, he threw many questions at me to supplement what he read and heard on DVD's.
He was close to everyone in my family. My kids knew him their whole lives, and he was "Uncle Marv" to them. I think he was in love with my wife Pam but would have never done anything to betray my trust.
Good-bye, Marv. I loved you and will miss you always.
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