Saying Good Bye to a Brother

The first time I heard about Dan Lucas was from his brother, Greg, who was 5 at the time. The Lucas family had just moved in across the street from us in Charlotte. Greg informed me that Dan was being born, as we spoke, upstairs in his house!
I digress. I guess that is the long way of saying that I knew Dan from the day he was born, or thereabouts. Over the course of time, I watched Dan grow up. I changed his diapers, took him to music lessons and helped him learn to swim. To be sure, he could be contrary and stubborn, but his dominant characteristics were his sensitivity and thoughtfulness. As the people reading this already know, he struggled with fitting in from an early age. What I didn't realize until now is that maybe we are all dysfunctional in that we are not aware of others enough and Dan was unusual because he had that greater amount of awareness of others that we lack. Dan was the Stranger in a Strange Land and eventually his strangeness killed him.
How does one say good bye to a fallen brother? Like Greg, there were a thousand things that I never got to tell Dan, but they are minimal compared to the times when we did talk; on the phone, in the car and on the river. So I will say good bye to those thousand things never said, but I will keep the multitude that were spoken. I will be sad that I won't talk to him again, or have him show me the latest trick on the water, but I will be happy, too, because the Stranger has gone home and I was fortunate that I was here to participate in his visit, however short.