The patents were definitely triumphs for me. Also, I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite twice. Once with my daughter and once with my wife and daughter. When my parents died, it was a tragedy, but that was sort of the nature of things.

My father died when I was 25. He died very suddenly of a heart attack. I always had a sense of lack of closure with him. He was a very difficult person to get along with. I felt like I was starting to get to know him in a man-to-man way. But I felt like that process got cut off. And strangely enough, ever since then, which is almost twenty-five years, I have had more dreams with him in them than with anybody else. He’s in a lot of my dreams.

My mom died in 2003. She had a longer illness. She had cancer. I had more of an opportunity to bring closure to that relationship, but it is still difficult when you lose a parent.