I knew today was coming and I remember thinking I would have no idea what to say. Still don’t.

Tim Conway is inextricably linked to the Carol Burnett Show, which was a huge part of my comedy education. I watched it religiously, and my laughter became tinged with a sense of awe.

I watch comedy like some people watch ballet. There is grace and beauty in it. And Conway was Nureyev.

He was gleeful satyr, full of joy and danger. You could tell when he was about to go in for the kill. It was in his eyes and when I saw it I was riveted, because I knew something marvelous was about to happen.

Tim Conway was going off book.

From there on it was just masterful. Absolutely impeccable timing and a mind like lightning. I felt a bit of sympathy for the people who were biting the inside of their cheeks trying to hold it together. It was a lost cause. Particularly for Harvey Korman, the poor bastard. Conway batted him around like a cat toy, got spit on him and knocked him under the sofa.

Those were moments of transcendent comic brilliance in a show that was already ridiculously well done. Nobody but Conway could raise those stakes.

In recent years his health had been failing, and there were rumors of Alzheimer’s or dementia. It turns out he was suffering from Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), which is no less brutal to the brain. That magnificent brain that made me ache from laughter.

The bright spot in all of this…this absence of one of the most underrated comic minds I have ever seen…is that somewhere, in whatever afterworld exists beyond our reckoning, I am certain that Harvey Korman is pissing himself with laughter.