What I’ll be publishing over the next few days was written beginning June 11th, 2013, while I and so many people I knew waited for news from the search, and then over the next couple of weeks leading up to Nolus’s memorial. I wrote with the intention that I publish something before the memorial, to try to capture some of the contradictions that I found in Nolus, to try to speak honestly about someone who had been a complicated presence in my life.
I ended up not publishing at the time. The piece felt too complicated and conflicted, and I suppose I was afraid of angering people.
Nolus remains a complicated presence in my life. But the best of his example guides me forward still, and now two years have passed since his death, and I think it’s time I share this writing.