Luke, of all the boys I’ve known — hell, of all the men I’ve known — may have had the best heart. He was just… good, down to his core.

This manifested in a lot of ways. Sometimes it was making someone laugh who was having a bad day. Sometimes it was making friends with a lonely kid. Sometimes it was forgiving his assy girlfriend for saying something mean, again.

Sometimes it was falling into a depression over the things he could not change, or the parts of life that were not good.

Luke was in the storms in Oklahoma today. I heard through the grapevine that he helped rescue efforts, searching through the rubble for survivors. I wasn’t surprised. It was the sort of thing Luke would just do. Of course he would.

Whenever something bad happens in the world, people post that quote from Mr. Rogers about looking for the helpers. Luke is one of those helpers. Luke is one of the people who makes me believe in the goodness of humanity — and that is not being melodramatic. That is just the truth.

I probably won’t be in touch with Luke, really. He has his family now, and his assy highschool ex-girlfriend should keep her nose out of things, but I’ll be remembering his good heart, and I’ll be sending him the closest thing to prayers I can muster in my agnostic little soul, because he’ll be thinking about the people who were lost, too, and wishing he could have done more.

Because that’s Luke’s heart.