LEXINGTON, Ky. — The first time Randy Gregory’s parents saw him on television during a Kentucky basketball game, they were so overcome with emotion that neither had adequate words to express them. So his mother didn’t speak and his father didn’t use the keyboard he controls with his eyes to type. They just sat with a flood of feelings, the joy and pride for their son, the hurt and forgiveness in their own relationship, taking stock of the hard lives that led to this precious moment, and they wept together.



“That was just surreal,” Nina says, including the part where she abruptly pivoted from her role as doting parent to that of primary caregiver for her ex-husband, when she lovingly suctioned his airway to keep him from choking on his own tears. “Nina is a lifesaver and a blessing from God,” Randy’s father wrote The Athletic in an email he composed with the help of software developed for people who suffer as he has for...