I Never Asked

March 2026 — I wrote this a couple of years ago, working through feelings about a former employee who had died young of cancer. The name and some minor details have been changed from the original to protect his privacy.

Originally written August, 2024

I often think about Evan.

He was an employee of mine. I don’t think he probably liked me very much. And, if I’m being honest, he had good reason not to.

His demeanor was slight and subtle but everyone liked him almost out of instinct - really liked him. I consider this regularly, because surely I am not nearly as liked, as loved. Evan was guarded, almost quiet. I only felt that I was afforded brief exposures to the real him, to his inner thoughts.

There are people who wield honesty like a weapon, taking pleasure in making others squirm. There are people who anxiously avoid conflict, sugarcoating bad news out of empathy, out of fear, and expecting to be praised for that act of deception.

Evan was direct and honest but did not evince a sense of schadenfreude in the delivery of that honesty. His speech was subdued but what he gave you was earnest. Is that what solicited so much adoration while he gave out so little? Or did I just see a different Evan?

At my company, a marketing agency, Evan was my second in command. Managing a company with myself and the other equal-part owner barking out often conflicting edicts. I often confided in him, convinced we were making the right decisions together, sometimes in defiance of, or without the knowledge of, my business partner. At the time I believed that I was empowering him, now I consider if I was only putting him in a compromising position. I wonder if there was justified resentment from something that, at the time, I thought was binding us together.

During a not-unsubstantial period of his employment I was drinking heavily and navigating a divorce - by degrees, I made a frustrating and poor a co-conspirator, aggressively pushing a corporate revolution on a friend who only stood to lose.

Evan would eventually leave my company for a better position at a larger agency. I later heard from others that he had struggled financially while working with us, though he never asked for a raise or complained. He was worth twice what we paid him. I was frustrated that he never indicated this struggle; I was embarrassed that I never asked.

The second to last time I saw Evan was after he had left. He had been sick for awhile by that point. Contrary to my expectations, he was willing to share his story, recounting the moment he found out he was ill and the treatments he was undergoing. He cried during that conversation, citing the various therapies he was undergoing impacting his hormones making him particularly emotional. I had no such excuse for my own tears. I like to think of this lunch as proof of some sort of real friendship, I really do.

Evan described being dismissed by doctors, the cancer only being discovered after it was too late. He detailed the painful tests and treatments, the struggle of receiving care in other cities, far from his wife and young son at a time when he, and they, needed one another the most. He explained that early-stage cancer treatment is relatively basic, only becoming aggressive, experimental, when things get bad—when it’s often too late.

Years later, when he or his wife would announce that he had been accepted to a clinical trial, others would celebrate - maybe this would cure him. However, recalling that lunch, I knew the news was not a source of hope but an indication that the end was approaching.

The last time I saw Evan was on Halloween and he looked great, he looked, healthy. Part of me hoped that my previous concerns were wrong and he had many years ahead of him.

For the previous few years, before he was sick, we would take the day off work and meet up with a group of friends to see the latest Marvel movie as we were both comic book nerds. Going through cancer treatment during COVID didn’t allow for convenient public appearances. Even so, I tried to at least extend an invite, knowing he couldn’t make it. I missed him and thought of him often. I wrestled with making that known without adding undue burden from someone who was only ever really his employer.

I struggle with how often I think of him. Once, during an impromptu session of playing some music with a friend, I sang a song about him shortly after his death. It’s embarrassingly awful musically but I can’t listen to it without breaking down. I am in tears as I write this, mourning someone who likely scarcely thought of me as anything more than an ex-employer who over-relied on him to run my business while I reaped the rewards of what he built.

Evan had the unfortunate distinction of slowly dying young. A distinction that allowed him time to understand how intensely and widely he was loved. He probably never for a millisecond considered or cared that I would be, years later, thinking deeply on his passing. In understanding and seeking meaning in my own life, I don’t desire or seek legacy or longevity, but, if, in some way I could impact someone so minor to my life as I was to Evan… that would make me happy. That would have value.

Evan was just a few years older than me and died of cancer on September 11th. Through the phases of anguish, acceptance, and fear that one goes through when a friend dies, at that moment, I thought - “this is the worst September 11th ever”. To this day, I still debate if Evan would have found that stupid and irreverent joke funny.