Those of you who know me know that I’m not someone who’s usually at a loss for words.  But I don’t have the words to begin to express what I’m feeling today.  My brother -- my  little brother Paul -- meant more to me than I could ever say.

From the time he was in diapers, looking up at me cross-eyed and smiling.   The times we spent making mischief with our father, or secretly conspiring against our mother, or jumping up and down on the bed ‘til the slats fell out and the mattress hit the floor, laughing so hard we had to stop.

I remember, when he was about four, he heard that the boys in the neighborhood needed another player for their stickball game.  He volunteered me.  My sister, he told them, is a really good hitter.  What he didn’t tell them was that my real area of expertise was his tush.

I was so proud of him.  When he entered MIT.  When he married Iris.  When he postponed his own wedding so that his big sister could get married first.  When he found a career that he truly loved, and did it as well as it could be done, without the slightest trace of self-importance.  And, most of all, I was proud of him because of how he loved his family -- and always let us all know it.

I can’t picture Paul without seeing him smile.  I can’t imagine him without hearing him laugh -- that incredible, joyful, infectious laugh that came from  deep down -- whether he was listening to his tone-deaf sister sing a Tom Lehrer song for the five hundredth time, or listening to one of his children tell a story at Thanksgiving, or beaming at his grandchildren as they were blossoming in front of his eyes.

Paul was the heart of our family.  It’s impossible to think that he won’t be sitting at the head of the table when next Thanksgiving comes, or when it comes time to reward the kids for finding the afikomen after seder.

But he will be there at the table with us, sitting in every chair, smiling inside every one of us, bringing us together the way he always has, somehow helping us to be thankful for all that we have, even in this year when it’s hard to think about anything other than all that we’ve lost.

When Paul was in the hospital, he was the one who was comforting us.   He wasn’t bitter.  He wasn’t morose.  When he wasn’t sleeping, he was smiling. What he told us was that he felt lucky.  He loved his work.  Even more, he loved his family.  He loved his life.  And we love him so much, for helping us realize just how lucky we are to have each other.

What I would really like to do today is to sit down with each and every one of you, and hold your hand and not let it go, and to tell you about my brother.   But if I started, I couldn’t stop.  And Paul might get a little impatient with me if I did, because I’m told there’s a Red Sox-Yankees game later today that he wouldn’t want to miss.

My children tell me I have a bad habit of finishing other people’s sentences.  And I probably did it more to Paul than to anyone else.   But he can’t scold me for doing it today.  So I thought I’d end by reading you a brief passage, written long ago, that expresses something of what I can imagine Paul might say to us, if he could speak to us now:
 

I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without the ghost of a shadow on it. Life means all that it has ever meant....Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you somewhere near, just around the corner. All is well.