Let There Be Light

“A few days after learning I had cancer, a dear friend of mine with his own health problems drove from hours away to show up at our door lugging two huge bags of the very finest from his favorite Italian restaurant. ‘When a friend is in trouble, you circle the wagons,’ he said. I was reminded of when Lou Gehrig, facing a devastating diagnosis, called himself ‘the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'” In the NYT (Gift Article), David C. Roberts gets a terrible diagnosis but also welcomes an unexpected light: Other people who care. Light in the Shadow of a Diagnosis. “Maybe it’s the steroids talking, but what has become clear to me is that without intimate human connection, however fleeting, we are lost. Everything else seems so small by comparison. It feels like something I had always known — perhaps something that deep down we all know — but then real life made me forget.” Yes, this is a moving piece with an important message about community and friendship. And yes, it also serves as a reminder of what’s most important at a moment when America’s diagnosis feels bleak.

+ “So, when my dad called me Tuesday morning, I thought it would be the election on his mind. It was all that was on my mind, that’s for sure. He had, in fact, just come back from voting, but it was something else. His voice was chipper, upbeat, but I could tell it wasn’t a good story. I know him too well. Turns out, he had gone out to eat, by himself, Monday evening. In fact, at the very same restaurant where he and my mom ate their last meal together. He ate, drove home, and once home went to wash his hands before going to bed. That’s when he noticed his wedding band was missing from his finger.” John Gruber with a very different election day story. How It Went.