Eulogy for a brother

For fourteen years, my brother Danny slept in the top bunk and I slept in the bottom. Every night, after lights out, he told me a story he made up, and every night I fell asleep before the ending. I never did find out what happened to the pirate with one shoe.

I'm Chris, Danny's little brother. Mom and Dad asked me to speak for the family, and I'm going to try to do it without falling asleep before the end.

Danny was three years older than me and made sure I never forgot it. He was a lineman in high school, a firefighter for twenty-two years with Station 6, and a husband to Maria for nineteen. He coached his daughters' softball teams even though he did not understand softball, and he learned it from videos at two in the morning because he refused to let them down.

The boy in the top bunk and the firefighter were the same person. When I was ten, some older kids cornered me behind the school. Danny showed up, didn't say a word, and walked me home. At the door, he said, "Don't tell Mom I was late for practice." That was it. That was him.

Twenty-five years later, when our father had his first heart attack at two in the morning, I called Danny. He was there before the ambulance, in his uniform, holding Dad's hand. He looked at me and said, "Don't tell Mom I left my shift." Of course, we told Mom.

Danny spent his whole life showing up before anyone asked, and then pretending it was nothing.

He leaves Maria, and Sofia and Elena, who have his stubbornness and, thank goodness, their mother's patience. He leaves Mom and Dad, and a little brother who will never sleep in a bottom bunk again without listening for a story.

Danny, I never heard the end of the pirate story. I figure you'll tell me. Thanks for walking me home. All of those times.

When Sam was five, he followed me everywhere, and I called him the pest. When he was thirty-five, he still called me every week to annoy me. I would give anything for one more annoying call.

Mike and I took different roads, and for many years we were not as close as we should have been. But I know who he was to the people in this room: a devoted father, a loyal friend, a man who could fix anything with an engine. I'm grateful you are here to tell me the rest.

My brother was twenty-six. That is not enough years, and I'm not going to pretend it is. But in twenty-six years he made more friends than most people make in eighty. Look around this room.