Steve Young came to the door without his cane to greet me this morning, with one visitor going out as I was coming in. He needs the cane for getting about but only intermittently. He’s wearing a brace while his fractured pelvis and cracked vertebrae heal, but he is getting around without overmuch difficulty and going regularly to physical therapy.

He’s mildly concerned about his short-term memory and attention span, which are a little out of kilter still because of the weeks he spent under heavy sedation. But he is appalled at daytime television and holds reality TV in contempt, so we can be confident that his judgment is intact.

He listens with interest to scraps of gossip from the newsroom and nods sagely at the word that everything is going straight to hell — the normative situation at daily newspapers from time out of memory. He is eager to come back to work, expecting that he will try to return in March if his recovery from his various injuries permits.

He and his wife and eldest daughters are living in temporary quarters — you can write to them for the next few weeks or so at 6607 Parkway Drive, Baltimore, MD 21239. They are bearing one another up as they struggle to cope with the loss of Matthew and Abby.

And he is deeply grateful for the expressions of concern that have appeared on this blog and in the many letters of condolence he and the family have received. “It has made a difference,” he said. So all of you who have followed this story since that awful day in December, feeling helpless, convinced that your gifts of food or money, your cards and letters, and your prayers were inadequate, be advised: You have eased four troubled hearts.