MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This is an entry I would've preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we can control in life, and apparently, I have passed one of those limits.
Those are the first words Major Andrew Olmsted of Colorado wrote for his last blog entry. The 37-year-old Army officer had been writing online about his experiences in Iraq for the Rocky Mountain News since last May. He'd asked that his last entry be posted on his Web site in the event of his death.
As NPR's Jeff Brady reports, Olmsted's final wish has now been carried out.
JEFF BRADY: Andrew Olmsted finished writing that final blog post just a few months ago. Last week, insurgents attacked and killed him and a fellow soldier, who'd come to his rescue. Wesley Olmsted says he read the post shortly after learning of his son's death.
NORRIS: I've read it twice now. It made my wife angry the first time she read it because she didn't want him to have been thinking about the possibility of his death, of course. But when she read it the second time, she was incredibly impressed.
BRADY: There's plenty of Olmsted's characteristic humor in the post. In the second paragraph, he asks friends and family not to cry, but to remember the good things about him. Then in parenthesis, he says, if it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions. Olmsted was a fan of the science fiction television series, "Babylon 5," he included a quote from one of the characters, Dr. Stephen Franklin.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "BABYLON 5")
NORRIS: (As Dr. Stephen Franklin) It's all so brief, isn't it? A typical human lifespan is almost a hundred years. But it's barely a second compared to what's out there. It wouldn't be so bad if life didn't take so long to figure out. Seems you just start to get it right, and then, it's over.
BRADY: Politics also were a big part of Olmsted's life. That's what led into blogging. Friends and family describe him as a conservative or a libertarian with a small L. In his final blog post, he specifically asked that no one use his death for political purposes. His father explains why.
NORRIS: He didn't want people from either side to use his death as a way to beat up the other side, because that's not the kind of person he was. He wants people to come from reasoned positions and not do a lot of screaming, and certainly not to use his death as a political weapon - that would be obscene.
BRADY: Through blogging, Olmsted became good friends with Hilary Bok. She's a philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins and a prolific blogger.
P: You know, he and I could not have been more different politically. And one of the things that made us friends is partly that we were just really interested in listening to the other, but also that we were both committed to the idea that if you are a democracy, you should treat people, who have opposing views, not just as fellow citizens who deserve your respect, but as the very people you have the most to learn from.
BRADY: Near the end of his final blog entry, Olmsted offers a tribute to his wife, Amanda. He wrote that she made life something to enjoy, rather than merely survive, and then he apologized for the burden his death is causing her. His father, Wesley, says this is the part that choked him up most.
NORRIS: I knew he loved his wife. I know they had loved each other for years. But the sensitivity, the understanding of himself and his relationship with Amanda, that was a little over the top. It was hard to handle.
BRADY: Finally, Olmsted expressed doubt about an afterlife, but just in case, he offered another quote from "Babylon 5" to his wife: I will see you again in the place where no shadows fall.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
NORRIS: And you can find a link to Major Andrew Olmsted's last blog entry at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.