Buckley, RIP

One of the last long-form pieces he wrote, I believe, appeared in our pages; it concerned the sale of his beloved boat, Patito. Here's how it ended:

... sailing can have so many rapturous moments, and there are accompanying pleasures. When you are in a harbor, there may be four congenial people around the table, eating and drinking and conversing, listening to music and smoking cigars, the wind and the hail and the temperature outside faced up to and faced down. Here, in your secure little anchorage, is a compound of life's social pleasures in the womb of nature. So, deciding that the time has come to sell the Patito and forfeit all that is not lightly done, and it brings to mind the step yet ahead, which is giving up life itself.

Few men were more ready to enter that undiscovered country, I would venture, than WFB. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.