A difficult goodbye to a challenging but loved human being

Today we laid to rest my brother in law. Below is what I shared at the funeral: a tribute to a brilliant man who left us all at a loss for words countless times in both life and death.

Don came on the scene in our family when I was just a few months old – I’ve never known a life without him in it. I never thought of him as “Bobbie’s boyfriend” or “Bobbie’s husband”…he was always just Don, as permanent a fixture in my life as any other family member. 

Don could be difficult. He was an enigma in many ways and I think we all felt at some point that we weren’t quite understanding him the way he wanted us to – or vice versa. But that wasn’t all of Don. He was a complete person with talents and passions and personality and strong emotions. 

He was smart, and not just in an academic or engineering way – although we all know about that part of him and I’m sure every one of us makes a point to ride in the Indiana Jones jeep adorned with his initials whenever we’re at Disneyland – but sincerely intellectual, the type of person who enjoyed getting into philosophical debates just for the fun of it, even if it drove the other person nuts. Once, as a teenager, I made the mistake of making some naive and judgmental comment on smoking or drugs, and I had to endure an endless debate about why society had decided that certain things like alcohol were “bad” when something like caffeine has been deemed completely acceptable, despite it surely being a drug itself. And by the way, we all know he loved classic Coca Cola – so he wasn’t even having this argument to stake some kind of moral high ground for himself, he just enjoyed the debate itself!

He was also hilarious in his smart, quiet fashion, and excellent at teasing someone, particularly in a slow burn kind of way. Decades ago I allegedly lost his and Bobbie’s house keys while babysitting Sylvia (although I still maintain the baby hid them somewhere and they are probably buried in a box full of legos in some Goodwill somewhere) and he NEVER let me live it down. For years thereafter, every holiday gift was prefaced with a disclaimer: “I was gonna get you a keychain, but…”

Luckily, his sense of humor extended to jokes directed his way, because when I discovered how much the man loved shopping and especially Banana Republic sweaters, I always made sure I had a zinger locked and loaded any time a turtleneck was on display.

Don really enjoyed helping me and trying to be my friend as I grew older, and I always appreciated it – even when one of our driving lessons, no joke, required us to first stop at Banana Republic to exchange some damn sweaters. It meant a lot to me that he treated me like an adult and that he was interested in my life. He’s the reason I’m at least a semi-competent driver, he got me a summer job during college, he made sure I knew and loved King Taco, and he loved chatting on the phone for hours on end: when I got my first cell phone I’d often spend an entire drive home from LA to San Diego talking to Don about anything from serious personal challenges to one of our infuriating philosophical debates. He even took a call from me one time while I was on a date and walked me through how to make homemade pizza dough, which was one of his many underrated skills!

My favorite memory of Don is a more serious one, and it occurred in the minutes after Sylvia’s birth. It was a long and difficult labor for poor Bobbie and when the baby was finally born, it was whisked away for heart monitoring, Don in tow, while Bobbie recovered separately. Family members were finally allowed in one at a time and I was able to weasel my way to the front of the queue, wanting to be the first to see the new baby. I wasn’t sure how Don would be feeling – would he be overwhelmed? Terrified? Exhausted? Irritated at this little sister of his insisting on intruding on his private moment with his minutes-old child? But the minute I stepped into the room, he looked at me with teary eyes, positively radiating happiness and joy, and the love he had for that baby was palpable. If we had been in the cell phone era I would surely have a photo to show you all right now, but I will never forget the look on his face and what it said about him in that moment. 

I was not lucky enough to score the number one viewing spot when Abby was born, but I saw the same look on his face when he proudly brought her home and showed her off to the whole family. Don loved his children and I know we will all carry that forward for him as they continue to grow and amaze us all with the people they are becoming.

I wish Don’s life could have been different. I wish we weren’t here right now to say goodbye. But I appreciate that we are here remembering him together, and I hope we all think about him the next time we drink any caffeine – because he was, of course, totally right about it being a drug.