On May 21, when Stephen Colbert tapes the final episode of The Late Show, he’ll walk offstage having done something no one has adequately credited him for: making it normal to talk about the hardest parts of being alive.

I started working on The Colbert Report as a writers’ researcher in 2005. A couple months earlier, my mom had called: “Beck, I heard Stephen Colbert on Fresh Air today. He’s getting his own show. You should work for him.” 

We both recognized that Colbert was funny, yes. But the real draw, and what we couldn’t properly articulate, was that he also had a way of revealing the full scope of a guest’s humanity. To my shock, I got the job. On the final night of our late summer hiatus in 2006, my mom died in a car accident 40 miles from the studio.

My life split cleanly in two. Back at work a couple weeks later, I found myself trying to flatten my grief, absorb it and keep going. Not because anyone said to do so (many colleagues showed up to the funeral in an oversized white rental van). Because the culture around me didn’t have adequate language for how to grieve, or where to make space for loss.

Now that The Late Show is coming to an end, I keep........

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