This Twitter Thread, About A Letter Charles Krauthammer Wrote, Will Bust Your Heart Wide Open.

Charles Krauthammer’s death has hit me harder than I expected it would. I won’t bore you with details about the conversations I enjoyed with him over email and on the phone (and on one perfect afternoon, in person!), but I’m sure those account for the wave of emotion over the news of his passing.

Apparently, at the very end of Special Report after the news broke, they cut to a shot of Charles’ empty chair. I haven’t been able to find a video clip of that moment, so if you’ve seen one, could you post it in the comments?

As I was on the lookout for it on Twitter, I came across this thread, and I cried a little harder with each tweet, until I got to the letter, and then I just sobbed like the kind of sobbing you do when you’re a chick watching a sad movie alone. You know what I’m talking about.

There’s no point in trying to introduce it in any way. Just read it.

I would like to share a story about Charles Krauthammer.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

In October 2016, my dad met Krauthammer and Robert Reich at a thing in Washington. I’m not sure exactly what the thing was, but they chatted for awhile after. My dad’s a geek for this stuff, so he got a photo and posted it to Instagram. pic.twitter.com/ATS6hanRiN

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

Until I saw that photo, I’d had no idea that Krauthammer was in a wheelchair. I just knew him as the pundit that conservatives of an older generation (like my dad) revered.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

I looked it up and learned that in his first year of medical school at Harvard, Krauthammer was in a swimming accident that left him largely paralyzed. Despite this, he found success as a psychiatrist and then as a political writer.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

“Still,” I remember thinking, “how sad.”

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

On June 25 of last year, I was living in Hong Kong. I got a FaceTime call shortly after midnight from my mom back home in North Carolina. I almost didn’t answer. “Everything is okay, but your dad’s been in an accident,” she told me.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

My dad is now 56, but up until that point he had been pathologically active — in this case, he was surfing in Nicaragua. A wave had crashed on him and slammed him to the bottom. He quickly realized he couldn’t move.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

To abbreviate a long story that’s still very painful: after a 48-hour trip from the jungle to Managua to the neurosurgical hospital at UNC, my dad learned that he had broken his neck and severed his spinal cord.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

He was and remains paralyzed from the chest down; doctors told him very candidly that he’d never walk again.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

For my sisters and me, those first two weeks remain foggy — those memories are shrouded in a patina of grief, confusion, fear, and, in my case, jetlag (I’d flown back from Hong Kong once we realized the severity of the injury.)

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

But what I do remember is the email Charles Krauthammer sent my dad. I’d like to share it here. pic.twitter.com/FO6hMJvjwz

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

(Here are screenshots of the letter expanded):

There is no playbook for coping with spinal cord injuries. They’re statistically rare. Support networks are limited at best. But in a year that has been defined by uncertainty and emotional exhaustion, that letter has meant the world to my dad and to us

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

I always wanted to thank Mr. Krauthammer for that, and am ashamed that I never did. It was a voice of lucid hope at a time when my family needed it more than anything. I will always be so grateful for it.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

Anyway, I’m a wreck now (as I’ve been for much of the last twelve months but who’s counting lol). Monday marks a year since my dad’s injury and I love him so much.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

I guess I don’t really care about his politics right now — there will be others to eulogize and critique. I’m writing this because Charles Krauthammer knew what to say at a time when virtually no one did, and he took the time to say it, and it meant so so much.

— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018

Holy crap.

If that story doesn’t move you, you might want to do a quick soul-check.

Ok you know what? Scratch the not-going-to-bore-you-with-details comment I made in my opening paragraph. I’m gonna tell you one quick story about my initial exchange with CK. I had written to his fanmail address that was listed at the bottom of all of his columns, never in a zillion kajillion years expecting a response. In my message, I mentioned this website (this was back in January of 2010), and told him how much I appreciated his work, and how we’d often quoted him here at COTR. I told him that he reminded me of my dad, and that I hoped to meet him someday if he was ever in Indy.

He responded from his personal email address, and wrote this:

Thank you for your kind note. And for your generous appreciation of my work. It seems we do have something in common — I too had a brilliant Polish Jewish father with a wonderful sense of humor. I don’t expect to be in Indianapolis in the foreseeable future, but if you and your husband are in Washington, let me know and you could come by my office to say hello.

Charles Krauthammer

The reason that’s so special to me is that I hadn’t told him that my dad was a Polish Jew. He discovered that by coming to this very website, and reading my old bio that was posted here (it’s since been updated). And that’s the level of interest I imagine he took in pretty much everyone.  He was endlessly curious about and interested in people, and he had this remarkable way of making you feel incredibly special when you talked with him.

His letter to Nate’s father doesn’t surprise me in the least.  It’s a great reminder of the extent of his empathy.

He “lived the life he intended,” he wrote in his final letter to his readers.  And what a life of consequence it was.