Member-only story
Words for Grant
I knew Grant for only a year, but he was the sort of person who made that irrelevant.
Grant described himself as having a “polarizing effect on people.” You would either get to know him quickly, or you were the sort of person who simply wasn’t ready for the heat.
I’m grateful that I wasn’t the latter.
Tender, good-humored, and full of fire, Grant drew me in. His candor, his zeal for the world, his desire to take love into places that had never known the meaning of the word — it all won me over.
I came to love Grant so quickly that I was embarrassed by it, and held off on telling him what he meant to me in case it would seem weird.
We went deep fast but it wasn’t threatening in the least. I had the sense that we were merely spending time where Grant spent all of his time — in the depths. Whether the depths of life’s hard questions, the depths of rich joy and hearty laughter, or the depths of despair, Grant knew them all like his childhood home. With that familiarity came a sense of ease. It was like breathing.
Walking through hell with people was simply what Grant did because he had been there before and come back again.
He would never let us feel bad for burdening him. Instead, he would end every phone call with the phrase I’ve heard more than a hundred times…
