What I read at my brother's funeral today

I am the youngest of four, so this unenviable task fell to me. It fell through the lawyer who regularly argues in front of judges and juries, right through the most outgoing of all the brothers and landed with me; the comedian, I guess.
So I took up the task.
I’d already written my brother’s obituary. It was hard.
Not just because he died, but because I wanted the world to know who he really was, which is tough to do in the conventional, services informative newspaper style.
It’s practically impossible without using worn-out, flowery adjectives or writing six pages worth of text. So I left some stuff out.
Here’s the obituary I wish I could have written:

My brother Andy died yesterday. Sunday, April 26, 2009. It sucks.
When you grow up with three brothers, you’re really not supposed to have favorites, but Andy made that tough, because he was funnier, smarter, wiser, harder working, more intelligent and more experienced than the rest of us. Naturally, we all liked him best.
Andy was only 48 years old.
Much too young to die. That’s less than half a decade; cars older than him still rumble through the streets on sunny days, but … you know, Pancreatic cancer. It sucks.
As the disease progressed, I knew there was nothing I could do. I wished and I hoped, and I didn’t believe it would come to this, because I didn’t want it to come to this. But it came to this.
Helen, who was absolutely amazing throughout this whole ordeal, made him as pain free and comfortable as any human being could have, but all I could do was sit next to him and hold his hand, whisper words of encouragement and love, hoping somehow, some way, that would ease some of his pain.
Sometimes I’d rub his arm, maybe because touching him made me feel better, because in my family, that’s what we do, and I hoped it made him feel better. Although, in retrospect, I could have just been annoying. Sometimes little brothers are.
Sometimes his thumb would squeeze me back, and I knew he was in there, stubbornly hanging on, refusing to quit, never wanting to give up, because that’s how my big brother was. Tenacious, or stubborn, depending on where you were standing at the time.
He stubbornly hung on even when we’d all resigned ourselves that the time was near; he hung on for another day, like he just didn’t want to let go.
Or perhaps: because Andy had done so many great things in his life, had so many monumental occasions, it just took two days for his life to ‘flash before his eyes.’
He packed a lot of life into 48 years.
30 years ago, if you would have asked any of the four brothers which one we thought was going to travel to Poland, Italy and Japan; I’m willing to bet we wouldn’t have said him. But he did it.
For a while he raised horses, not to mention three great kids. He played hockey, once in a tournament in Lake Placid on the same ice where a year earlier the US won a gold medal.
He built models when he was younger, and he built decks for his friends when he was he was older.
A few months ago, right after the devastating news that the chemo treatments didn’t work, when Andy had lost a lot of weight, and a lot of his positive attitude, he said, “People can come visit, but I’m not the Andy that I used to be.”
And to that I say, “No.”
He may not have had the same strength, or the same body, and perhaps his demeanor was a little depressed, but he was still the same guy.
He was still the same guy who used to wear that crocheted hat my grandmother made him. He’s still the same guy who taught me how to play hockey, and how to swing a hammer and drive a nail like I meant it; and the same guy who used to drive me around in his Trans Am.
Cancer may have taken his body away little by little over the past year, and I won’t forget that, but that’s not what I choose to remember.
That sucked. He didn’t.
And I’ve got a thousand stories to prove it.
Ask me about the time the passenger window fell out of that Trans Am and onto my lap and he thought someone was shooting at us, so he floored it and proceeded to do 80 down Dutch Ridge Road. Andy was that good.
Ask me about the time we were catching football in the house and knocked over a lamp, and he rightly reasoned if we blamed the dog, mom wouldn’t get mad, because she liked the dog and the dog didn’t know better. Andy was that smart.
Ask me how he used to hit stones from our driveway into the woods across the street, using a 16 pound sledge hammer for a bat. He was that strong.
Let me tell you about the time I helped him build a barn, and stayed on his couch for almost a month. We’d work all day, then come back to his house, where I just wanted to relax, but he would end up in tiny soccer games with his kids, because he was never too tired for them. He was that dedicated.
And of course, I felt bad he was outnumbered 3-1, so I’d join in too. I was that much in need of wisdom.
Ask me about the time he was feeding M&Ms to the dog, or when we built the hockey rink in the backyard, or the time I was wracked with guilt for thinking something I considered selfishly inappropriate at a time of grief, but he said to me, “You never know how you’re brain’s going deal with something. Sometimes you think things just to be able to cope. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
He was that wise.
I could tell you about the time we went canoeing and he and Tom accidentally steered themselves under a fallen tree, bounced off a log and came roaring out backwards, Dan screaming ‘get me outta this canoe’ and me in a canoe between my parents yelling, ‘let me in that one!’
I could tell you about when he played baseball and used to hit monster home runs, pay-off from all those hours swinging a sledgehammer, or how he wanted to chew tobacco like the big leaguers, but hated tobacco, so he chewed shredded coconut. But he didn’t want the other team to know, so instead of spitting the white, obviously not tobacco juice out, he swallowed it. And I’ll say this, if an opponent thinks you’re bad enough and crazy enough to swallow what they think is chewing tobacco, you have an intimidation edge.
He was that bad and that crazy.

And these are only the stories I know. Ask other people about their stories. Ask his best friend Dave about racing stories; ask Tami to tell you the story about how she met Andy for the first time because it’s classic Andy; ask Merideth, Weston and Garrison about how wise and loving he was, and, at times, maybe a little dorky; ask Helen to tell you about his quick wit; or Sam and Jesse about his dancing skills; ask Tom about the time he drove Andy’s car for the first time, while Andy napped in the passenger seat. He woke up, glanced over at the speedometer and said calmly, “You want to slow down?” because evidently speed in that Trans Am was hard to judge; ask Dan about the time they built two bikes out of spare parts in the garage and then raced them through the woods; ask Mark or Jim about his problem solving skills; ask my parents to tell you how, once when Andy was just a child, my dad needed to correct him, so he called him over, and when Andy came, his little sad face got so close, their noses touched.
Ask anyone who knew him, and they could tell you a story about how funny, or smart, or hard working or nice he was.
But let me tell you about the time he changed a flat tire in a tuxedo, because I tell it better.
Let me tell you about the time we went through the Wendy’s drive-through backwards, so I could do the ordering because he didn’t want to. Or let me tell you about the two brothers basketball duo of Dr. A and Tragic Johnson , or how he used to tease me when I was clumsy, saying I broke everything, until one day on the CB someone said, ‘breaker, breaker’ and he said, “Larry, someone’s calling you.” He was that funny.
Let me tell you about the first time someone called me Andy’s other little brother. It was at the Beaver County Ice arena where he was a goalie, a teammate, a friend, and a hero to a lot of people. Kinda like now but with skates. Two of his teammates walked by, looked down at me and said, “That’s Andy’s other little brother.” Dan was already his little brother and now I was Andy’s other little brother. I guess I’ve been called worse.
But I’m not sure I’ve ever been called better.
And that’s what I’m going to remember.

People tell me, this will get easier over time. I don’t believe that. What I believe is this: I will get stronger over time; I will be stronger because when someone dies, I think they pass their strength on to us. We’ll all be stronger because, Andy was so incredibly strong. That strength is here now for us to take, so tell a story and take a share.
Trust me, there’s enough to go around.