Our son Brendan died suddenly on November 5th [View all]

[The Magistrate]

Our son Brendan died suddenly on November 5th.

He was our baby, our first-born. We miss him so much.

He was a wonderful son and a good man. He was the mainstay of our family.

His children meant the world to him. He made tremendous sacrifices of his time and energy for them.

He enjoyed his work, and was very good at it. He was employed by an air freight company, where he rose from a driver to become operations manager.

His working at home this spring and summer gave us a chance to see him in operation, to appreciate his skill and aptitude for what he did. Co-ordinating shipments and deliveries all over the country, often with extremely time-sensitive cargoes, is as much an art as a business, because of the wide range of human factors involved, when several people must each perform a stage of the task for its successful completion. He kept things moving, and he knew how to do it. It was something to witness.

Cars and guitars are not uncommon devotions of a young man, and they ran deep with him. He found relaxation and artistic expression with his guitars, and had recently bought himself a new electric and a small amplifier. We can remember Brendan, as a toddler long ago, setting an empty doughnut box on the coffeetable, with the cellophane paneled lid tipped up, sitting there behind this 'windshield' to drive his car. He would inform us, when out on a walk, which of the cars we passed had happy tires.

He was an adventurous and curious child. He would often go wandering, beyond where we expected him to be. We would find people saying hello to him all about the neighborhood. Brendan charmed most of the people he met, and all of those he worked with. Even today, we are discovering friends we never knew he had, and over the years had occasion to learn of youthful adventures we'd never had a clue were going on.

Brendan was our family's memory. Events loom larger with children, and they recall things a parent will have long forgotten. He took a serious interest in genealogy, sparked by some oddities in our background. His mother's name is unusual, and he tracked down just about every stage of her ancestors' immigration and lives here back for several generations, and got a fix on current distant relatives. He laid to rest a myth I was raised to believe, about my own family background.

He had a passionate interest in Soviet and Latin American history, and his grasp of these far exceeds my own. His tastes in literature ran from the Heaney translation of Beowulf to Ulysses. He was a voracious reader.

Brendan took a great interest in politics and current affairs. He was angry and appalled at what has been happening to our country, and it is some small comfort at least to know he saw the turning of the tide before he passed. As events developed over that weekend, all we could think of was how glad he would have been to learn what we saw happening Thursday morning actually came true.

The loss is unfathomable. He simply fell dead of what must have been a massive heart attack, with no warning at all. His eyes were half-open but there was no one there anymore. The medical people tried but there was nothing they could do.

The standing desk Brendan made of the dining room table is covered with candles, and sometimes we stand there and just look at what he saw, what was on his mind, the open pads of notes, the computer that still lights up at the slightest nudge. Flowers, purple and white, are there as well. We brought him home this Friday, and the urn rests for now on his bed, above the crossed guitars, the acoustic and the electric.

We do hope to have a memorial service early in December, but in the current situation it is not possible to be certain.