Daniel, 1995 – 2018

My little brother passed away earlier this month. He was 22. His name was Daniel, but I always called him Dude Boy because I heard my Grade 11 economics teacher call another student by that moniker in class and I thought it was hilarious. The nickname stuck, and to me, he was always Dude Boy.

He was born in November ‘95, at 6:18PM. It snowed on the way to the hospital. Unlike me, he had the good sense to be born head first. It was a good start for his life. He was the brightest, most considerate person I ever knew.

In elementary school he joined a local programming group, and in high school, he medalled multiple times in international programming competitions. Later on, he became a co-leader of the school programming group. He was a patient, thorough teacher and helped many younger students in the group to develop their skills. He emphasized understanding why a bit of code worked before using it.

My brother’s work and achievements with the high school programming group allowed him to come to the University of Waterloo on a big scholarship. My mom and I joked that he might try to take the fabled “trains course” or do a minor in combinatorics and optimization, but by his last term, he was taking all bird courses. He deserved a bit of a break after completing all his computer science degree requirements with flying colours.

My brother was also an athlete. My dad said that my brother was like a hamster when he rode circles around the running track at a nearby high school, feet pumping furiously on a single-speed kiddie bike. In elementary school and high school, he became an accomplished long-distance runner in city track and field competitions. We were so proud of him. Sometimes we called him a “good job boy”. And we always told our friends and family about how brilliant we thought he was. I think I boasted about his accomplishments more than he did.

Dude Boy was the most gentle, considerate individual, but with a spicy slapstick sense of humour. He probably got that sense of humour from watching the movies Hot Fuzz and Kung Fu Hustle frequently during his formative years. For my birthday, he sent me a picture of my cat edited so that she was wearing a party hat, surrounded by confetti, and blowing a party horn. When anybody did anything gross at home, he would pantomime wearing a hazmat mask with left hand, and spraying invisible disinfectant with his right hand – with sound effects.

As a child, he obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, Bionicles, and (very briefly!) Theodore Tugboat. At some point he developed a fondness for euchre in all its variants. Later on, he grew to enjoy video games, board games, and comic books. Late at night, I’d sometimes hear him shouting about ingame strategy with his mates, interspersed with PG-13 swears like “What the-” and “Screw this! Screw this!” – thoughtfully censored for my parents’ benefit. On Thursdays nights after one of his bird courses at the university, he would go and play board games with his friends. At home, his bookshelf was stuffed with comics – Asterix, Garfield, Tintin, and Saga among the titles. But his favourite books might have been the Harry Potter series. He dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween once – my mum hand-knitted a red and yellow striped scarf, and he already had the spiky hair and the glasses for the look. Sometimes, when the two of us were kids, we would re-enact our favourite scenes from the books with our stuffed animals, all playing the part of Hogwarts students. Our favourite scenes to reenact were the bits from the fifth book, where we would invent pranks that we might play on Professor Umbridge – usually involving fireworks and dungbombs.

But outside of these adventures, my brother didn’t have a lawbreaking bone in his body. One Christmas, my mom made a tray of chocolate Christmas trees – an upside-down ice cream cone, covered in melted chocolate, and rolled in sprinkles. We went downstairs one morning to find that one Christmas tree had the pointy top missing. My brother had eaten the top half of a chocolate Christmas tree but left the bottom half in the tray. If he had eaten the whole chocolate tree nobody would have noticed one missing. But my brother had experienced a sudden attack of conscience halfway through his midnight snack and put it back, letting himself get caught. That’s the type of dude my brother was. He was a good guy.

After finishing his classes this year and graduating, he was supposed to to go to California to accept a position at Facebook, where he had completed multiple co-op terms previously. He said he might get his G2 license in Ontario over the summer, and I joked that he’d be driving circles around the local Drivetest centre for weeks since the parking spaces there were very awkward to get into. I told him that I hoped that Facebook would let him get away from Eagleland after he’d progressed a bit in his career, and that he should visit home frequently in the meantime.

There are so many things about my brother that I will miss. His favourite color was blue. His haircut was always a number one buzz cut all around, so he looked a bit like a fuzzy bowling ball. But he only got a haircut when he came home from university, so by the time we saw him, he had a spiky ‘fro. His hair was sharp; when my mum cut it she said it lodged in her fingers like little black splinters. Mosquitos rarely bit him, and my dad joked it was something in his sweat that we should bottle up and sell on eBay. When we went to the Chinese butcher for meats he ate the BBQ pork almost exclusively. Sometimes, he liked to pour the sauce from the bottom of the container into his rice and mix it around by stabbing it vigorously with his chopsticks. His favourite fruits were basic ones, like apples, oranges, bananas, and pears. He liked to be neat: his room at home was always tidy, and everything stored in its proper place. He talked really fast when he was excited and he had a brilliant smile. I wish I could see him smile again.

He was the very best of all of us. None of us expected that he would die so young. I was supposed to have many more decades teasing Dude Boy about his haircut and his posture. Now we will have to grow old while he stays 22 in our memory forever. His family and friends love him and miss him very much. I’m certain not a day will go by where I won’t think about him.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” – Winnie the Pooh