Don Shirley

But I still can't even now swim in a straight line.

Even today, I still have a problem with balance.

It's a problem I'll always have, so I've lost balance really in the left side.

Not completely, but what happens is you get used to dealing with it.

So now I'm doing things, I'm running up and down all over the place and doing all the dives I ever used to do.

I consider myself recovered after that first year really in terms of diving, but in practical terms I'll always be damaged.

What I came to realize on that

was there was absolutely at no point on that dive did I ever think that I wasn't coming back.

There was never even a question in my mind.

All I had to do was what I do, and I would work my way out.

So even at the point where I was adding the gas to breathe, or when I was trying, I was never thinking, oh, I need to get out.

All I was doing was living where I was.

So now one of my things is I say, you know, believe you can.

Because if you believe you can, you can do it.

In the army, we used to say, died with his boots on.

Died doing what he loved and what he wanted to do.

So in that, it's a good death.

That's the way that I always look at it.

And Dave is always in my thoughts.

Not in a macabre way, but just like I'm expecting him to come around the corner and we can discuss the good things that we've just done.