Thread by @bakerlink

I first met Mike Gerson in a college dorm 39 years ago.

He was busy infusing theological words into a legal pad with great intensity and semi-legibility.

That was pretty much the story of every day after.

Even, in recent years, through many, many days of terrible pain.

Writing day and night. Like he was running out of time.

And he was.

Michael died early this morning.

“Peacefully,” his wife texted just after midnight.

Hours earlier in his hospital room, he would open his eyes but couldn’t speak.

I was glad he could see me.

He’d already said enough.

“I’ve written everything I needed to write,” he told me a few weeks ago in the sunny garden of his home.

But I already miss the words from a future that will not be.

You can read the long obituary in The Washington Post. The paper that carried his column for the last 15 years.

Famous speeches he wrote. Phrases he crafted.

Many were moved by his writing. Or angered by his invective.

@MJGerson leaves a hot digital legacy.

But I was a friend outside his DC circle.

The political Mike mattered the least to me.

Though I did help get that started. Recommending him for a job as a writer for Charles Colson back in 1986.

I’d been approached about the job. But I knew instantly Mike was a far superior choice.

I sent over a column he’d written in our @WheatonCollege paper.

My mother recalls that it was about Mother Teresa.

Mike’s heart for the suffering and those on earth’s margins will be what I remember most.

A week ago there were four books on his hospital nightstand.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets.

A book of readings for advent and Christmas called “Watch for the Light.”

And the new autobiography of his longtime friend Bono.

But there was only one book on his bed tray.

A book of pictures of his dog Latte who died last year.

He made her famous in a recent column entitled, “Why I will never live without a dog again.”

Michael died in his hospital room because the hospice was full these last awful days.

Forgive me if that’s the part that makes me cry.

Maybe his new dog Jack could have come to the hospice.

Michael had many notable friends.

I once went to a college reunion and people asked me, “Where’s Michael?”

I told them he had planned to come but that he was in northern India along the border of Nepal.

“What’s he doing there?”

“Oh, he’s at the Dalai Lama’s house.”

For 39 years Mike would read things out loud to me as he crafted them.

One of the greatest speechwriters who ever lived.

The very echoes in my head are privileged indeed.

In return? I wrote jokes for talks he would give. Hundreds of jokes. The best ones he could never use.

He’d had a heart attack while working at The White House. Suffered many years with cancer. Terrible pain. Depression. And other afflictions he didn’t even bother to bring up.

Sometimes I would see him on a TV news show and couldn’t figure out how he could be so lucid.

But in the suffering, I never heard bitterness or resentment.

Even on a call before he would enter the hospital for the last time.

After the doctor had told him more bad news.

“I’m okay with this,” he told me.

Talk about teaching us how to say goodbye.

A wise person I know says the antidote to suffering is found in powerful meaning and purpose.

In speaking the truth despite the pain.

That was the story of Mike Gerson’s life.

Today my heart is with his wife and sons. His two brothers are such fine men.

My mother had texted me a verse from Psalms to read to Michael.

And in the hours at the hospital yesterday — I forgot.

Driving home to Pittsburgh last night I texted the words to his wife Dawn:

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”