Brenda was a wit, an avid reader, a master quilter and pretty decent at Kumihimo beading. She was quick on her feet and as Mark Twain once quipped, she remembered everything, whether it happened or not. As a little girl in conservative East Texas, she’d dance on the countertop for a nickel and when we first met, she was a research lab tech by day, a professional belly dancer by night. She was kind and effervescent and never had a bad day. She was the person you called when you wanted to know who played so-and-so in that movie or who Henry VIII’s 5th wife was, and she remembered all the words to gospel music she hadn’t heard in 50 years. She’d been to 67 countries in all 7 continents. She hiked the Inca Trail from Cuzco to Machu Pichu and to Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan. She watched the sun set over the Ganges in Varanasi, saw the Great Migration in Tanzania, touched the rock in Uluru, swam with sharks and sea turtles, slept in a tundra buggy to see polar bears and remembered every detail of every trip. She grew up in Texas, lived on both coasts, London and New Zealand, not to mention 3 weeks with the Cuna Indians off the coast of Panama. She played board games, cards and the piano and though she had a lovely singing voice, she rarely used it. She was constantly trying new recipes at home but always got the same thing at her favorite restaurants. I accused her of being predictable; she said she was consistent. She was that. She was a mother and grandmother and an aunt to all the kids on the block. She was my wife, my friend, my love, my constant companion for 40 years. I’ll remember her forever dancing in the kitchen while cooking, I’ll take her sweet giggle to my grave, and I’ll be grateful forever that she was foolish enough to marry me.