The most successful man I’ve ever known.

I threw dirt on a man who didn’t deserve it.

You probably don’t know him. As far as I know, he had no real plans to conquer the world.  No, he was quite happy living his life quietly inside the Perimeter in Atlanta.  So chances are, you’ve never run into him.

His name you ask? Adam Stine.  And for nearly ten years, he was married to my sister Stephanie.  Adam was all I could have asked for in a brother-in-law.  Why? Simple — He loved my sister. And that love made her a better woman.

So I think it’s only right that I tell you a little about him. Adam was a little older than me.  And a little shorter. I have blonde hair — he had black. We were different in a lot of ways.  His eyes were like coal and twinkled when he smiled.  Oh, he smiled a lot. Adam was a “the glass is half full” kind of guy.  And he was brilliant.  As an engineer, he was a real problem solver. He loved comic books, kids, science fiction, single-malt scotch, reading, his family and his friends. Ah, his friends. Did he ever value his friends.  I saw them Sunday. They threw dirt on Adam, too.

A couple of years ago, Adam got dealt a crappy hand of cards.  But in typical Adam fashion, he played them with a smile, an open heart and more courage than any man I know.  You see, he was diagnosed with ALS (or better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.) It’s a cruel, slow death  — and yet, Adam was convinced there would be a cure found in time.  That was Adam for you:  Positive in the face of doom. His friends rallied around him and my sister.  Adam could have quit — but he didn’t. He continued to live his life as he lost control of his body.  It was that body that held his mind prisoner at the very end.

That end was Friday. ALS took Adam Stine from my sister. From his family. From his friends.  It took the best brother-in-law imaginable from me.  And all I could do the end is throw dirt on him.

I brushed off my hands at the gravesite and looked across the cemetery at the sea of cars. Friends and family crowded around to pay their last respects.  I thought about what Clarence the Angel said to George Bailey –” No man is a failure who has friends.”

And at that moment, I realized, Adam Stine was the most successful man I’ve ever known.