Working on what to say tomorrow: first draft, intro

I'd like to start by thanking you all for coming. I'm going to try to do this without crying or using profanity - but I can't guarantee either.

My dad had two overriding passions in life - his family and loved ones, and his career. My mom was the love of his life. And he was so proud of all of us, he really was.

I know that when someone leaves in what seems like a voluntary way, there are so many emotions - among them anger, abandonment, grief, devastation. But the truth is, he loved all of us, he really did. He just couldn't handle his pain any longer.

I'll let his colleagues focus on the career aspect of my dad's life. What I'd like to share with you is a bit of the family life, a bit of the personal.

Life with my dad was a constant adventure.

Sometimes it was spectacular and exhilerating. It was seeing a broadway show when I was so little that my dad brought three pillows to the theatre for me to sit on. It was a circus in Paris. Horseback riding lessons around the pyramids in Giza. A stay on a houseboat in Kashmir.

In so many of the photos we looked through for the slide show, we are laughing so hard. The backdrops are often exotic, dramatic, and beautiful. But most of all, we're hugging, we're close, and we're happy.

And sometimes it was much like being a passenger on one of those buses in the Andes or the Himalayas - the ones many of us have been on. Where you're not sure if the brakes work, and you're careening around a blind curve at top speed, and you're peering down the side of the mountain into the 3,000-foot abyss, just praying that everything comes out OK.

So it wasn't always a fun adventure. But it was never, ever boring.