He took comfort knowing that some conditions—mostly cerebral, like Multiple Systems Atrophy, Alzheimer’s, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the list went on—were untraceable until death.

When he learned the picture belonged to a stranger, he threw it away, then spent the night wishing he could throw away his feelings just as easily.

The next morning, they discovered the letters and realized that the person who had always asked if everyone else was okay had been silently begging someone to ask him the same.