On this day, this year, my brother would have turned 48, 15 years after his passing. He was born on July 14 & passed on March 14 at the age of 32. Growing up, Dan & I were close out of the six Kehl kids due to the spacing of our births. The first four were always a unit, while Dan & I were much younger, born to older, more exhausted parents. Given how much Dan & I bickered during road trips or fought over the TV & what show to watch, I wouldn’t have predicted how close we’d grow as teens & young adults.

Pretty much all of my childhood memories involve my brother Dan. Sure, he could be bossy & I’d tell him that he wasn’t my dad, but I appreciated spending time with him when he would tolerate me. I loved looking at his baseball card collection & watching the trades he’d make with his friends on the porch of our childhood home on Prospect Street.

He took his responsibilities as my big brother quite seriously, & I loved when we would play board games like Life, Connect Four, Clue, Monopoly, Risk, & Battleship. Chinese checkers, checkers, chess, card games (pinochle, crazy 8s, hearts, rummy), Boggle, Parcheesi, you name it & we likely played it. We both loved trivia, so Trivial Pursuit remained a perennial favorite until we grew older & played video games or RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. Dan loved Tolkien & The Hobbit, so he really was the one to introduce me to high fantasy. We were also kids together in the 80s so pop culture from that era entertained us both.

And it was mostly Dan who caused me to major in English in college.

We shared similar taste in music, visited historical properties together, & watched movies like Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Last Starfighter, War Games, Tron, & even Anne of Green Gables together. It’s hard for me to reflect on my formative years without seeing Danny. Dan had a silly, playful side that few people had the privilege to see. He loved pranking our parents & we could just look at each other & have laughing fits about nothing in particular. My stomach would ache from all of the laughter. And I could always tell when he’d try to trick me because he had this tell of flaring his nostrils & sniffing.

It’s hard to believe he’s been gone this long now, but at the same time it has felt like centuries of loss have passed.

In all candor, I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get to an emotional place where the trauma of losing Dan to a 4-year battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma & Graft vs Host disease doesn’t reduce me to tears when I allow myself to feel the emotions I carry in my heart. You see, I donated bone marrow for a transplant that eventually failed. It felt unfair for such a kind, thoughtful, likeable person like Dan to suffer, especially when he was a much better person all-around than me.

I think that’s why I’m constantly driven to achieve the next bigger & better goal. It’s like I have to convince the world or myself that I won’t waste the time I’ve been given, time that my brother didn’t get to enjoy.

And so I’m taking time today on his birthday to remember the priceless gift I treasured in having him as a brother, as my best friend, for the time I’d been given. My son, named after my brother, frequently reminds my mother of her Danny in temperament & outgoing, kind nature. My mother prayed that my Danny would be as great a joy to me as hers was for her. So, it was a big deal when we recently visited Dan’s grave, a trip made every year after a long weekend in Rockport, MA, where we lived as kids. It’s still hard to process that he’s gone, to live with a huge chunk of my heart missing. We learn to live with the holes these losses create, but we are never the same. Loss changes you.

But I’m still grateful. I know that not everyone experiences such a positive relationship with a sibling, a close bond as best friends to forever treasure. And now I have my own Danny Boy, who is silly & makes me laugh & exhibits so many of his uncle’s characteristics it’s crazy. So, today, & every single day, I appreciate the gifts of love I’ve been given.