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For the most part I am a silent listener to these daily postings, too inefficient to devote time to EBB correspondence and to attend to the PD project with which some might suggest I have become obsessed over the past several years. I also must confess to an initial reluctance to express my feelings regarding Alan in the cyber medium - too faceless and devoid of emotion (a hauntingly familiar problem within the PD community). But then it occurred to me that this was the primary means by which Alan touched the lives of so many people and that perhaps in some way it is an appropriate forum to express these thoughts. Grief has been a familiar and constant companion in my life over the past decade - I grieve for my lost life. There is no closure when as the pathology evolves the loss expands. Gradually the things which in a former life gave me great pleasure have become useless artifacts of a vaguely remembered time recalled by an occasionally encountered photograph or unassociated thought. And yet in spite of the downward spiral I am rarely morose or depressed and never without hope. In fact I am amazed at how little it takes to sustain my basic joy of life. In the words of a perhaps banal but certainly influential contemporary philosopher "love is all there is", and as the years go by and these artifacts pile up this phrase seems to hold ever increasing validity. It survives all the cruel and outrageous fortunes of life - in fact I believe it is the one thing that survives life itself. The immortality of this phenomenon sustains me, isolates my grief and prevents it from overwhelming my spirit. Alan was my friend. We traveled together, confided in one another and suffered and joyed together as friends do. He was and continues to be a source of joy and sustenance, a force and presence which continues to exist regardless of how time might change the form of its embodiment. And although I cannot talk with you as I talked with you before, the specifics of our conversations were never as important as your presence in my life and that hasn't and never will change. Though we are all individuals apart from other individuals as a consequence of time, distance or dimension this force reveals that this "separateness" is really illusory. "two distinct divisions, none, number there in love was slain" tom riess