All Saints Day for an Ordinary Person

When asked to write about someone who’s passed away but who’s also been very influential in my life, my first inclination switched from this person to think of someone more important to society as a whole. I think of the Mother Theresas of the world, the Ghandis, heck, even the directors of local soup kitchens would do. For some people it’s easy for someone famous and whom they’ve never met to make a profound impact on their life, those people may have read a book or two, maybe watched a documentary or interview about the famous person.

For me, I can’t embellish a story that’s barely there in the first place. Sure, I’ve met and read literature on some pretty great people, but have I been profoundly influenced by them? No, not like I have been by someone else, someone far more ordinary, someone who barely did anything great—except for maybe break the record for the running long jump in his fifth-grade track meet.

My brother Chad had terrible taste in music. He liked terrible musicians like Metallica and AC/DC and all their terrible songs. When he got his braces off, his teeth were scarred everywhere except where the brackets had been from all the Mountain Dew Big Slams he drank. He liked detestable “foods” like pork rinds, Jackson Pond snapping turtles (no, really), and blueberry candy canes, and with this diet, he was nearly unbearable to be around on a hot day if he forgot his deodorant. He was the kind of brother who pulled his bothersome little brother’s hair so much that he started to get a bald spot. He was the kind of brother whose horseplay with his sister ended with an unfortunate mishap with a preheating iron, searing its imprint into her butt.

But above all the ordinary things he was and did, there were three extraordinary things that I most loved about him: one, the fact that I, his little sister, got to teach him how to drive a stick shift. Two, his uncanny ability above anyone else to beat me in any game of chess—one-on-one chess, team chess, speed chess, it didn’t matter. And three, he could get me to smile no matter how mad I was at him.

What I’m trying to say is that you realize that the ordinary things about someone are truly extraordinary once that person is gone.

Sometimes the most ordinary people in the world are who influence you the most. They’re the ones that make the biggest impact on your life, not in what they do and say, but simply because they have existed in this life alongside of you. You’ve shared meals together. You’ve fought with each other. You’ve shared your secrets. You’ve laughed at each other’s expense. You’ve grown close. Others have impacted me in this way: my younger brother, my husband, my mother.

I’m a different person today because I knew Chad. What Chat taught me while he was alive were no age-old wisdoms. I don’t necessarily remember any remarkable quality about him that I wished I had. If anything, he taught me that deer hunting did not have to be a silent affair. We could drive through the forest, blaring and singing the lyrics, “and all the girlies say I’m pretty fly for a white guy.” Mother Theresa didn’t teach me this. My brother did.

But the truth is, it was not Chad’s presence in my life that impacted me the most, but his absence. Because of his absence, I want to make all my relationships with people count. Because of his absence, it distresses me to leave a conversation on a bad note. Because of his absence, I look at life differently. Because of his absence, I doubt my faith constantly, but perhaps have more of a drive to figure it out. And, maybe most of all, because of his absence, I don’t really mind the smell of pork rinds on someone’s breath anymore, but I’m afraid that eating Jackson Pond Snapping turtle was a one-time, or rather, two-time deal.