Engineers and administrators: we’re probably more alike than either of us ever admitted.
## Returning the Books
I had taken four books from his study when I was there in January. Two I’d planned to read. One was one I’d recommended to him years ago that he’d apparently read and kept. One was the space program history he’d been reading when we had our last Sunday call.
I read the space program book. It took me about three weeks, reading on the train and in the evenings. It was good — genuinely good, the kind of popular history that does its research without being dry about it. I found the part he’d told me about on the Sunday call, the detail about the preparation protocols that he’d found moving. I read it twice.
I understood why it had moved him. It was about the meticulous preparation for outcomes you couldn’t fully control. About doing everything right and then accepting that you’d done everything right and whatever happened next was what happened.
He’d found that moving because he’d spent three years watching his heart do things he couldn’t fully control, and he’d done what he could — the pacemaker, the medications, the preparations — and he’d made peace with what he couldn’t. In his way. I think he was more at peace with it than he let on. I think the text eleven days before the end was part of that peace.
The book is on my shelf now. I’m not going to return it. I’ve decided that’s okay.