This Star Won't Go Out

to be honest, I’m not even sure if future me will even be alive. and for that reason I’m sending this email to mom and dad, since if I’m NOT alive, at least I know this email will be checked. man, what a way to end this letter . . . okay, future me, just try to be happy. try to do things. don’t forget that many times you thought you’d never make it through the night. remember all the people that have helped you in the past. tell your family how much you love them. go to school—it may seem stupid, but doing homework and research can get your mind off the little, bothersome things. read. you’re forgetting to read as much, and reading is a lovely thing. try to solve a rubiks cube again, you solved your first one yesterday :)


just . . . just be happy. and if you can’t be happy, do things that make you happy. or do nothing with people that make you happy.


there was so much more I wanted to say, and maybe I’ll send another one of these if anything happens. I love you, and I hope you turn out good.





ESTHER DAY


by John Green


When we realized how sick Esther was, Hank and I talked on the phone about setting up a perpetual holiday within nerdfighteria that would honor Esther in the way of her choosing, and that we would commit to celebrating as long as we made videos. I told Esther about it during her Make-A-Wish weekend: She could pick any cause or celebration, and then every year on her birthday, we would make a video about it. (I don’t remember at the time whether we’d agreed to call the holiday Esther Day, but we had by the first Esther Day: August 3, 2010.)

Esther devoted a lot of time and thought to her choice, and in the end she decided she wanted Esther Day to be a celebration of love—not romantic love, which already has its fair share of holidays—but the kinds of love that are underappreciated in our culture: the love between friends and family and colleagues. While many romantic couples say “I love you” to each other many times a day, these other kinds of love, Esther felt, too often go unacknowledged. That’s certainly the case with my brother and me: Before Esther Day, I don’t think I’d said “I love you” to Hank since I was about twelve. But now, every August 3rd, I gather my courage and tell my friends and family I love them. Even my brother.





I love my family. My family has supported me through my cancer and my crap and almost dying and everything and when I was, like, younger before I had cancer you know and I was all like little kid angsty, and I love them, and I love my sisters I love my brother I love my dad I love my mom I love my pets, they are included in the family category. I love my friends; my friends are amazing, the ones I’ve met online, the ones that I still have IRL, and this video makes me happy so I just re-watched it a lot and I just love, it’s so lovely, and thank you for saying that you love Hank, I know you love Hank, you don’t have to say you love Hank for me to know it, but I mean yeah, saying you love someone is a good thing, and I love you John.



—Esther video, response to the first Esther Day video,

August 2, 2010





THIS STAR WON’T GO OUT FOUNDATION


by Lori Earl


The day after Esther’s funeral, there was a knock on the front door of our home in Quincy. When I opened the door, standing there next to his bicycle was a young man, sweating profusely in the late summer’s heat. He said he was from nearby Braintree and asked, “Is this the place where I can give a tribute to Esther Earl?” When I said yes, he handed me an envelope. He said he had written a note and had a small donation that he wanted to contribute to Friends of Esther. His name was Jarid, and it touched my heart so much because it’s practical, local . . . I mean, on the Internet it’s huge and it’s across the world, but this was somebody from the next town over. I asked him, “Are you a nerdfighter?” And he said yeah and gave me the nerdfighter sign. And I just thought it was so amazing. I gave him a glass of water and a bracelet of Esther’s—he said he was going to wear it until it broke . . . As he rode off, I opened the envelope to discover a five-dollar bill along with this typed note: