When you made us recite Ozymandias in class, I grumped. When you made us study the difference between a Petrarchan and a Shakespearean sonnet, I groaned. Now that I’m old I realize I never got to thank you for everything, every word, sentence, and syllable. Your epitaph is so beautiful.

Ed Ridgley hiked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 2018, at age 57, also asthmatic, thus completing the number one item on his bucket list since age 10. At 17,500 feet, he wondered if any of those “you can accomplish anything” self-help gurus had ever done anything like this. But base camp was as far as he wanted to go, that was enough. Then again, who knows what enough really means?