What do I say about a man who I briefly spent time with only twice (and that when he visited Diana and co. about 17 years ago…)? Perhaps it is because around that now long past time, in the aftermath of my ugly divorce (that Diana saw me through the worst of), we two shared a fantasy that Tom would come to Brooklyn, we would meet, and in spite of being 11 years apart, me having 5 children and the small issue of living on different continents, we would fall in love and live happily ever after. We DID meet and in spite of the above fantasy never transpiring, something in the far back of my mind always thought that it COULD have. Maybe that is why, when I first looked at all the pictures here of Tom through the ages, I found myself suffused with a sense of loss way beyond what I would have expected to feel. And what I mainly noticed was the intense and loving attention shown toward his bevy of nieces and nephews in every shot here which included they and him, a sense so palpable that it’s hard not to cry just recalling this from 3 days ago. Perhaps it is sad that he never had children of his own. Or maybe perhaps this is what he was meant for—to leave a strong lasting impression on his nieces and nephews, both near and far. I don’t know…. But I hope wherever it is he lands in his eternal journey, that there he will be rewarded tenfold for the cruel and horrible fate meted out by medical science in the name of alleviating the suffering of one medical illness and leaving in its wake the devastating cancer that he miraculously beat, but then came stampeding back in the end taking him away so many decades before his dying even should have had to be contemplated. Much love to Diana and the rest of the Quick family, and all the branches growing from the central core.