Life is worth living well: Ross Douthat remembers Andrew Walther, who died last year on All Saints’ Day…

Ross Douthat in his new book reflects on what it takes, with a tribute to our friend and freedom fighter Andrew Walther.

Ross Douthat has a powerful new book about his battle with chronic Lyme disease. He writes beautifully with honesty and gratitude. It’s a page-turner that really opens up the hidden world of Lyme and its burdens on families. But I stopped and wept when I got to the part where he writes about one of the best people he knows, who died of cancer while he was dealing with Lyme. Our mutual friend Andrew Walther died a year ago on All Saints’ Day (November 1). For me, The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery, is in no small part a tribute to him and a call to us all to remember that life is a gift and that it isn’t forever.

Andrew was “a Knight of Columbus and energetic global diplomat who was saving Middle Eastern Christians from the Islamic State while I was wandering around our rural property and dosing myself with tetracycline and tweeting against Trump,” Ross writes. “He and his wife had their fourth child just a couple of months before we had ours, and then it happened: a leukemia diagnosis in the middle of the pandemic.” He recalls what I do too well. Andrew had just taken a new job heading the news at EWTN on June 1. Before the end of the month, I got a text from him in an emergency room. “Please pray.” (Which I knew was more about his family than it was about him.) By the evening, he called to tell me he had been diagnosed with leukemia. It’s the last thing I expected him to say. He would typically call me to tell me about some noble work involving information he sometimes wondered why he knew. If tireless Andrew, after obeying all the shutdown rules, could be stricken with cancer, no one is untouchable.

Before the diagnosis, COVID came with a blessing of time — including with his newborn daughter, my goddaughter. Travel ceased. He was home, working, but also devoting years of dad time in a few months with his children. In the short time he had, he seemed to instill a lifetime of fearlessness. I pray that, in the mystery of it all, he has a direct line for infusing eternal wisdom in their hearts.

Andrew’s wife, Maureen, is amazing. Being with them is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Faith makes it possible to keep going, even as it doesn’t make sense, a year on. (In fact, if I’m honest: It makes less sense when I try to think about it rationally.) Watching her makes me pray more for every single parent, whatever the circumstances. It takes such perseverance and courage. All parenthood does. But without a partner, all the more so.

As Ross chronicles, Andrew’s cancer treatment seemed to be going well, until it didn’t. Some of my last conversations with Andrew were about experimental treatments. I don’t know whether he knew that time was coming to an end, but for the first time, in the final days, we were making plans to meet — in New York for his doctor visit, at the house in Connecticut. Because of COVID, I hadn’t even met my goddaughter, but Andrew was done with separation. Everything went too fast, though — I met her at the vespers service the night before his funeral Mass and burial.

Andrew died on All Saints’ Day. That’s one of the things that is a consolation. The timing of his death confirmed what those of us who were privileged to be his friend already knew. I had said to him over the months of the sickness: “I love you too much to call you a saint, but if you stay on this path . . .” He was selfless. He felt called by God to help the Christians suffering persecution in Iraq and throughout the world. There are Christians living in Erbil today because of actions Andrew took at the Knights of Columbus. A university has opened there because of so much of his work. I hear that a dorm will be named in his honor.

When Ross first was showing the debilitating symptoms of Lyme, he was not being diagnosed correctly. He thought he was having heart attacks, as doctors dismissed him as mentally ill. What a cross, and for someone so smart and capable. Reflecting on Andrew and it all, Ross is grateful for “the chance to keep fighting,” to not have his family experience absence, even if he is a husband and father in “a diminished state.” Ross shines a light on a struggle that people endure but that doesn’t make the news as much as some others. I have no doubt The Deep Places will be a gift for many. It is for me. I’m grateful he paid tribute to our friend, reminding us to love in the time we have.

We live at a time when we long for normal and hope that a vaccine will make it so. But there is no vaccination that is going to keep us from suffering and death. We best not be deluded by false security. Be grateful for life, and keep moving forward together in the hope that even the joys — and certainly the pain — are not all there is.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.

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