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.
