To the rest of us, he will be remembered not merely as a contrarian par excellence, but as a superb wordsmith with state of the art wit.
A master of paradox and, in this sense, the rightful heir to Walt Whitman, Hitchens personified the maxim, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I am large. I contain multitudes."
In this age of pre-fab obituaries, and self-congratulatory, often perfunctory, eulogies, it strikes me that he would like us to remember only that death is inevitable; life isn't.
And live he did, fully, irreverently, and with a flair for the audacity of being.
While he may have questioned who, or what to thank for his brief time on earth, Hitch lived as one who never questioned life itself. His renegade spirit will long survive us as a reminder that, first and foremost, we must occupy our lives.
