Sometimes I feel like I grew up in the Fitzpatrick household. Rob being my closest friend from infancy, I was a regular fixture in the home - first for playdates, then sleepovers, then as Rob and I gained something more or less like independence, for extended, blurry, many-day-long jaunts of gaming or martial arts training, depending on the year.  I couldn't calculate how many hours I spent in that house, and over time, particularly in my teens when my own personal circumstances felt sometimes unstable, the Fitzpatrick residence became a very meaningful place for me. Even now, when I dream of my childhood, I am often back in the house on NE 18th Avenue.

My strongest memory of Al is a composite emotional memory more than a real one, made up of countless tiny details from countless meals at the dining room table, all blurred together into one patchwork recollection. Al, animated behind his plate, regaling us with facts or theories he had found in the world, telling jokes in dozens of different voices, smiling his broad, completely unguarded smile. I will never know what my regular presence at his dinner table was like for him, but thinking back on it now I still feel this sense of security and warmth and acceptance which over so long influenced the way I felt about myself and the way I treated others.

I'll never forget his kindness, and the example he set as a father and a human being.  I'll always be thankful for it.