Yes. Immortality is the stories we tell about those we have known. But yours is poetry, so the hug is felt. Another story, and I’d like to dedicate it to you in thanks for the hug: At about 6:00 on a Sunday morning just before the start of the Iraq War, I arrived by ambulance at a small regional (southern) French hospital. The French words I had rehearsed during the entire trip came out to the medics removing me from the ambulance: “You won’t let me die because I’m an American, will you? (As I had expected, they laughed.) Once inside in a curtained off Emergency “Room” I lay waiting, as it turned out, for shift change at 7:00. What I saw was a “cure” for the battered child that I had been: As each member of the emergency room staff arrived, there was an “embrasse,” the customary French greeting between friends. Seeing that and later the six doctors at the foot of the gurney, one of whom came close and bent over to tell me that I wouldn’t die (double pulmonary embolisms), I never feared for a moment during the rest of my three-week stay.