I’m guessing you’ve been quite courageous. But before I get into guessing, let me start with what I 100% know. I know that I’ve always enjoyed being around you and your brightness, thoughtfulness, and ease. As xxxxxxxxx became unreachable years ago, it was not just the loss of his company, but also of yours. I will always and forever cherish great times I had with you.

Now back to courage. Too often, discussions about courage revolve around the dramatic: running into burning buildings, pushing of children out of traffic. These acts are to be celebrated, for sure, but they are unthinking momentary impulses that come from who knows where. Furthermore, the opportunity to exhibit courage in this manner may never arrive. So I like emphasizing a second, more ordinary form: doing hard things for oneself that conflict with the interests of people one cares about and may well conflict with some of one’s interests and values as well.

A person has values, and those values invariably include something akin to “care about other people.” The closer one is to “other people,” the stronger the obligation to “care.” The obligation can become so strong, one can lose herself in a noble justification like, “This other person is suffering so much, how can I think about myself at a time like this?” But of course the responsibility to care for others can’t be unlimited for the underlying value isn’t martyrdom. One tries, loves, supports … and then the responsibility reaches its endpoint. It takes courage to even see this endpoint. There’s nothing else I can reasonably do. And if I keep on this path, the cost will be too great for me. That’s only step one. Then there’s the grappling with what others will think, especially the suffering person. This grappling is maximally tough when it’s plausible that one’s supportive efforts were helping to keep the suffering person alive. And thus why it’s so courageous to act and decide to carry these costs instead of the status quo’s too-expensive burden.

Maybe I’m off base with all of this. I really know so very little, and I’m perhaps reading too much into an obscurant ceremony that systemically removed you from the story. Maybe you wanted that. Maybe courage was never part of any of this. But on the chance my reads aren’t fatally flawed, I had to send this.

While my relationship was mostly with xxxxxxxxx, I still care about you. If there’s anything I can do in this most challenging of times, please reach out.