To Bill

 Don Imus

Listening and watching Imus in the Morning. I began watching because it reminded me of my brother-in-law, Bill. He passed away in the fall of 2004 and September became the cruelest month.

He had listened to Imus forever. When my wife and sister-in-law and myself viewed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, we loved it. Our friends seemed to merely tolerate it. They thought the characters were over the top and not at all life-like; they had o.d.ed on The Royal Tenenbaums and were not receptive.

 Well, they had never spent any time with an individual like Bill, who forced Life to spread out in order to encompass his great zest for life. They believed people like Steve Zissou to be outrageous figments of the imagination. We had the good fortune to have known such a person. If Nikos Kazantzakis had known Bill, he would have written Zorba about him. God bless you, Billy.