Good Morning, Hank. It’s Thursday August 3rd.
It’s Esther Day and I love you.
Esther Day is a holiday founded by Esther Earl,
our friend and longtime Nerdfighter who died of cancer in 2010 when she was 16,
and she wanted Esther day, her holiday, to be about the other kinds of love.
The love that we don’t celebrate on Valentine’s day.
Love between family and friends and especially taking the time to say
I love you when it’s hard to say it.
Now I don’t want to flatter myself and say that I was in any way
involved with the creation of Esther Day,
but I do suspect that part of what Esther was thinking was my gosh
it’s hard for these two nerds to say I love you to each other.
And so, I’m gonna start a holiday where they have to do it at least once a year.
But it has been hard over the years, like, I’m about to confess something
super big brother-y and embarrassing, but sometimes when we were like,
just out of college, or you were still in college
and we would have our occasional once a year,
or once every 6-month phone call.
We’d always have these great phone calls, we’d talk for like 45 minutes,
we’d have broad ranging conversations about all kinds of things.
And then, when it came time to hang up I wanna say I love you and I wouldn’t,
and then I’d just be like, alright, Well, take care!
And then you’d hang up, and then after we hung up I would say,
I love you. But now, I’m functionally forced to say
it to you once a year, and actually we have been saying
I love you more in private, haven’t we Hank?
Because this year’s Esther Day. No two ways about it, hits different.
Your cancer diagnosis has reminded us that life is fragile,
and also, that we are very fortunate to be in life with the people we’re in it with.
It’s also helped me to remember the cost of not saying I love you.
I need the people in my life to know
that I love them and I need to know that I am loved.
Esther saw that at 16 better than I did in 2010 and so she gave us the gift
of this holiday this opportunity to tell the people in our lives we care about,
that we care about them.
But I don’t just love you Hank, I also really deeply admire you.
There’s a lot of gifts that have been given to me in my life,
but very few of them stack up with the one that I received on May 5th 1980.
I’m gonna, I’m gonna try a different way. Look, I’ve always know that cancer sucks.
Our dad had cancer twice when we were little. It had a huge impact on his life, on our lives.
I’ve seen cancer up close in friends
and in the lives of people like Esther and her family,
so I didn’t need you to get cancer to know that cancer sucks,
uh– but I have been reminded anew how difficult it is for the
person living with cancer for the people supporting them,
when our structures, our societal structures are not set up
to support patience and their families effectively.
And after Esther died her family set up a charity called This Star Won’t Go Out
that provides direct financial support to families with kids living with cancer.
And I understand better than ever, just how much difference supporting
This Star Won't go Out can make in the lives of those families.
Because, like Hank, we don’t need money. That’s not a source of stress.
It wasn’t a big deal for you to be able to leave your job on a moment’s
notice for an indefinite period of time but for the vast majority of people.
All of that and so much more isn't easy. This Star Won’t Go Out
provides such an essential service for families like that so addition to encouraging
you to say I love you to the people in your life you love.
Especially when it’s hard, I encourage you to check out
This Star Won’t Go Out and donate if you can.
tswgo.org Link in the dooblidoo.
Also, Hank this summer has sucked and I have this intense need to add
but to the end of every negative sentence.
This summer has sucked
but I’ve gotten closer to my brother. That’s true, but there are better ways
that we could have gotten closer, you know? Or this summer has sucked,
but I learned a lot. Which is also true. You do learn a lot when you get promoted
to unpaid social media intern to temporary and reluctant CEO,
I would’ve rather learned those lessons in a different way though.
There’s a but I can feel good about. Here’s a but I can get behind.
Definetly not. Alright, here’s a but that works for me.
No, frick. I’m just going to say it instead of intro-ing it.
This summer has sucked massively, but I have seen up close how much love matters.
How much the love of your colleagues at DFTBA and Complexly matters.
How much the love of your spouse and your kid matters.
How much the love of your family and your friends matter.
What we really need in this world,
and all in the end we can give each other is accompaniment and attention.
To walk with each other, and to listen to each other
so that none of us has to go through everything that we will have to go through, alone.
And so I’ve been reminded just how much all those kinds of love matter,
and how wise Esther was at the age of 16 to start of all holidays, this one.
Hank, I love you so much.
Happy Esther Day
I will see you tomorrow.