You've heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, Randee could speak volumes by simply rolling her eyes ... usually because of something stupid I'd done or said. And believe me, in the more than 31 years of our married life, I've said and done more than my share of stupid things.

Like the time I got us lost when we were taking the oldest off to college at Fresno State, simply because I was too stubborn to consult a road map.

"Just a minute, let me get the map," she said to me.

"Right, like we need a map!" I moaned. "Come on, let's go!"

"I'm getting the map so you don't get us lost again," she snapped.

"Hey, it's not like we're heading out in search of the Northwest Passage ... we're just going to Fresno!" I said sarcastically.

I tried to explain that we were setting sail in a T-Bird and a Camaro, not the Nina and Pinta. And our voyage would take us to Fresno, not the New World ... so who the heck needed a map?

"You do!" she huffed, adding that single word that she figured said it all. "Men!"

"Oh, yeah," I snapped in my attempt to defend all men from being lumped in the same category with Wrongway Corrigan. "Well, Columbus was a man, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," she said somewhat smugly, "and he was looking for the Orient when he discovered America!"

"Sure," I said defensively, "but he didn't have road signs."

With that she just rolled her eyes.

And then there's this little problem I have about matching my clothes in the morning before going to work.

"Don't tell me you went to work looking like that !" she would exclaim. "How could you wear that tie with that shirt? Did you look at yourself in the mirror and really think they went together, or are you just blind?"

She could have been a little more sensitive to my feelings. After all, it was really her fault. If she would simply drape the right tie over the corresponding shirt hanging in my closet, I wouldn't leave the house looking like some sort of circus clown.

But she would say, "You're old enough that I think you can dress yourself."

So I would—and then she would just roll those eyes.

Then there were those hard-to-remember holidays, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. No matter now hard I tried, I always seemed to forget.

Most years, I could cover myself with some feeble explanation. My favorite was, "Oh, you're kidding ... today's Valentine's Day? How could I have forgotten again this year? Hey, what's for dinner? I'm starved!"

But the dumbest of them all came about 13 years ago when she was about ready to graduate from San José State University. You see, I wasn't planning to attend the ceremony. Seems that the oldest son had a baseball tournament that weekend, and the time of the graduation conflicted with the first game.

"Mike and I are going to skip the graduation and go to the game," I explained to her. "We'll catch up with you at the party later."

Well, needless to say, I wasn't exactly a candidate for Husband of the Year. And that little plan of mine drew much more than an eye roll—even I wasn't stupid enough to miss that message.

So the oldest and I went with the rest of the family to her graduation, and was I glad we did.

You see, hers was truly a remarkable story of inspiration. We were married young, and we had to drop out of college not long after our wedding in order to make enough money to pay the whopping $170 monthly rent on our duplex.

She took a series of jobs she didn't particularly care for, just to support me so that I could pursue my career. She worked for a title company in Los Gatos, a bank in downtown San Jose and a recording company in Sunnyvale—all the while staying focused on her long-range goal ... to become a school teacher.

When we had our first child, she started a daycare business in the home so that she could be a stay-at-home mother, but still help support my career. During that time, she went back to school nights and studied while watching a dozen or so kids during the day.

And finally she did it—she earned her degree and became a teacher. But it was more than that ... she became an outstanding teacher. And she may not have realized it, but when she accomplished that goal, she also became my hero.

I lost Randee to cancer on Sept. 21. We had the opportunity to discuss many things as she faced that terrible disease with the same courage, dignity and elegance that she faced every other obstacle in her life. Then it occurred to me that the one thing I didn't say to her, that I never said to her, was that she was, and always will be, my hero—because of the teacher she was, because of the wife she was, because of the mother she was and because of the person she was.

But I know exactly what would have happened had I told her—she would have just rolled her eyes.