“Well, he was just there. You know, I think he had such a terrible growing up himself that he was just grateful in the aftermath of that. Just glad. A glad person. But also he understood, he understood how some things are just . . . insolubly painful. You can’t make them better, you can’t make them turn out differently. And what he was good at, in the face of that, was offering a kind of . . . joyous sympathy. Or is it empathy? Anyway, he was just there, steady and warm. He made people happy, without even trying.”
