It's important to have people to depend on

In an otherwise forgettable Robin Williams movie called "What Dreams May Come," there is a wonderful scene.

Williams and his teenage son are talking, and his son is upset that he isn't living up to his dad's expectations. Williams tells the boy how proud he is of him, and then tells him that if he ever had to storm the gates of hell, his son is the first person he would want at his side.

At the time he never expected he would actually have to go into hell to rescue his beloved wife, but the metaphor is understandable. When things are at their worst, who would you want at your side?

I would have some pretty good choices, but at the top of my list I would put my son. He is a good kid, a high achiever and he really cares about doing things the right way. When he was a freshman in college, one of his roommates came to me and said something that totally blew me away.

He said, "Virgile is the nicest person I have ever met in my entire life."

Now I know the kid who said this was 18 at the time, hardly looking back on a long life, and I know he and my son had a falling out a couple of years later.

Still, wow.

Second on my list would be my younger brother. Stephen is 10 years younger than I am, and he is the man I wish I was in many ways. The work he put in the last seven or eight years helping to care for our father, and the time he has spent since last March taking care of our mother, has done so much to show his unselfishness.

Virgile and Stephen have one thing in common. If you ask them to do something, it gets done.

Sounds simple, but think of all the people you know who don't come through.

Then look for people in your own lives that if you had nowhere else to turn, you could turn to them for help -- and get it.

I am a lucky man.