My niece will be graduating from university next week, I was thinking to myself how proud Steve would have been. They weren’t extremely close, but he thought she was a really lovely person, and he didn’t think that about just anyone.

So many of us take for granted that a smart kid will go to college, will have these chances to succeed. Steve didn’t fall prey to that casual assurance. He didn’t get to do the college thing, and he was envious.

There were so many things he dreamed of. There were so many small things he dreamed of doing, of being, but he couldn’t find the energy. He was so tired.

And we take for granted that we can get out of bed, that we can mow the grass, that we can walk up stairs, and he couldn’t. So often he just couldn’t. And no amount of me knowing, intellectually, that he couldn’t changes how fundamental our disconnect was. I watched him struggle for a decade and I still could never get it. Because I have every confidence I will live to see fifty. I expect to be able to carry the groceries in from the car.

He knew his dreams were hopeless, but I would never accept that. I ignored what it suited me to ignore and assumed that with love all things were possible.

Now, of course, I delude myself that I get it. Now I think I’ve learned that last, hard lesson. Now I get to feel the straitjacket death wraps so snugly around us. But I’ll recover, and he couldn’t. I’ll survive, and he can’t. Our paths came so close, but never overlapped.

Love wasn’t enough to make up for all the things he had to say goodbye to, every dream he just had to shrug off.

How could I ever think it was?