Men don't typically have intimate friends to whom they can tell their hopes and fears and dreams. Paul was one of mine and I was one of his since 1958.

It's easy to be maudlin at memorials, but who anywhere remembers a sad or depressed expression on Paul Busch's face? Not I. This was a face with a smile, a man who knew how to have a good time, how to laugh, who loved to laugh. He was a generous and giving man, and never in my nearly half a century memory of him did he demand anything for himself.

How do we recall Paul? At the head of his dinner table telling a story. In his kitchen nibbling -- before and after meals. In his family room entertaining, or watching an old movie. On his tennis court: cutting, slicing, smashing, destroying. I tried so hard to get him to leave his hospital bed for one last game with me, in hopes that I might take one set off him in my lifetime. Alas!

We see him watching the Red Sox lose. Being a Red Sox fan was his one serious flaw and came from early childhood abuse by his father who raised his as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

Here was a man who was glad to see you, who listened to any problem you wanted to share and then gave you his best shot, or said: "Better ask Iris about that."

Paul lived life to the fullest and enjoyed nearly everything he did. Iris chose and he enjoyed. He told others and me in these last weeks that he had no regrets about his life, did not feel that he had left anything undone. How many among us can say the same? Paul had strong opinions about social and political issues -- most of them wrong -- but I learned from him that what you say about such things around the dinner table does not measure the person that you are. He was a man of great integrity and compassion, of massive intelligence.

It was always a family affair with Paul and Iris. I barely remember his outside of that context. This was especially true at the end of his life. May each of us be blessed with people like Iris, Jordan, Jeff, Lisa, Hope, Jan, Mark, Lisa, Sue, Davey, Stephen and Barbara, who love us as much as they loved and took care of Paul.

Most, most, Paul made my beloved Iris happy for over four decades. In my eyes, the years of their marriage and the happiness he brought her were his greatest personal legacy. She is the woman he wanted her to be, the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to make happy and whom he worried about, even at the end. We can honor Paul by cherishing Iris, though she certainly earns that all on her own.

This man leaves a great hole in the world, a hole in my heart that will take a long time to close. The pain is exquisite and reminds me that there is no agony without ecstasy; that the pain of his loss stems from the absolute joy of the journey we went on together. What a great run we all had with him.

My wife, Louise, had known Paul only since 1995. Still, the other evening when we got the news that Paul had died, she cried and cried and said: "It wasn't enough."

It wasn't enough for any of us.