On the Far Side of the Jordan

I was shocked to see the note on NRO commemorating the one-year anniversary of the death of William F. Buckley Jr. It seems like just a few months ago that we were mourning our loss—just a short span of time, but one which has brought the deaths of so many fine thinkers, writers, and leaders. Here is what one of those men wrote about his friend in ” William F. Buckley Jr. and the Possibilities of Life ” (The Public Square, May 2008):

Bill Buckley was a man of almost inexhaustible curiosity, courtesy, generosity, and delight in the oddness of the human ­circumstance. He exulted in displaying his many talents, which was not pride so much as an invitation to others to share his amazement at the possibilities in being fully alive. He was also, in and through everything, a man of quietly solid Christian faith. I am among innumerable others whose lives are fuller by virtue of the gift of his friendship . . . .

In the early 1990s, Bill and I launched a regular gathering that was simply called “That Group.” (Let the conspiratorially minded take notes.) It was composed of twenty or thirty editors, writers, and other people of public influence, and we met twice a year, once in Washington, D.C., and once in New York. In later years, the Washington meeting was discontinued, mainly because like-minded people there have enough occasions to get together to plot the betterment of the world. At our last lunch at the house in Connecticut, Bill proposed ideas for the next meeting in New York. But I do not really think that he expected to be there. I think we both knew that we were possibly, probably, meeting for the last time . . . .

I called to mind the lines in Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral : “Yet we have gone on living, living and partly living.” The life of my friend Bill Buckley was the opposite of living, living and partly living. As much as this life allows, he lived fully, exuberantly, relishing the possibilities of gifts gratefully received and gifts generously shared. He was ready for the more of which this life is part. He heard his Master calling and he readily went. May choirs of angels, to harpsichord accompaniment, welcome him on the far side of the Jordan.