This is what I shared at the memorial service:
“Do you want to play this game?” my brother would ask us.
“Which game?” we would always respond.
“This game!” And in an instant, Dana was weaving together some fantastic game with endlessly complicated rules, setting the objective, telling us the ways we were allowed to pursue it, and occasionally turning the whole thing on its head.
In case this isn’t clear, This game was the name of a game; it was a game in itself. This game was an invitation into Dana’s inexhaustible imagination, serving up the soup du jour of his creativity—we never knew exactly what we were getting into, but we were willing to go along for the ride.
In those early years, when we weren’t going along with whatever game Dana wanted to invent, Veronica and I would sometimes sneak into his room at night, on the third floor of our house on Riverside Ave, and he would tell us stories. I remain spooked when looking out at the spires of St. Francis Xavier at night and remembering a particularly creepy vampire story he told us.
Dana wanted an audience, but mostly, he wanted to create, to tell stories, to dream up thrills and challenges, to share life through the imagination.
Growing up as Dana’s younger sister, I was sure he was a genius. I had one teacher who insisted that I stop spending so much time saying how “smart, smart, smart” my brother was and give myself some credit. But this was a child who read non-stop and seemed to remember all the minutia of what he had read. When he started school in third grade, after being homeschooled for several years, they would send Dana to take classes with the fifth graders. I have always been an avid reader, but I remember spending time watching Dana’s eyes as he read a book, being shocked at how quickly they would dart back and forth over the page. Yes, I was convinced, he was a genius.
To call Dana quirky would be an egregious understatement. It is more apt to adopt his description of himself: Rhymes with orange. But Dana was always very serious about his role as an older brother; by the time he was three and a half, he had two younger sisters to look after and stand up for. Unless, of course, we were talking when he was trying to play video games and, heaven forbid, his character lost a life. Then we got his fiery temper! As a ginger, I’m allowed to say such things. (Although at this point in my little speech, he would be rolling his eyes and shooting me that, “Are you done yet?” look.)
Years later, when we were in high school, I would be applying myself to my homework, and Dana would appear in the doorway and commence a monologue. It might be a retelling of some movie he had seen, a conversation he’d had with someone, or the playing out of a hypothetical situation he found compelling. I had learned it wasn’t even necessary to engage. With my back to him, I might offer an “uh-huh,” “really,” or notably annoyed “Hmmmmm!” And he would continue with his monologue, pausing to laugh to himself or maybe cough and clear his throat… and then he’d be off to his own room!
Now, I would have to engage when I wanted to do something like borrow some of his music. Back in these days we still used the CD, and Dana was not content to simply let me borrow his albums. Before he would lend me his CDs, he would make me read a manga, a Japanese comic book or graphic novel. And this is how I came to read Chobits, Love Hina, Ranma 1/2… more manga than I would ever have cared to admit at that point in my life.
I see these forceful recommendations as another facet of Dana’s big brother persona. As an adult, this persona also included the role of Game Master. Many of us enjoyed the weekly game nights that he hosted… for a time it was pizza on Mondays at Pizza Putt, and he would always insist on paying for whoever showed up.
Dana was always brotherly and caring, but this took on a different tenor when what I like to call “the second batch” came along. He was 14 when Olivia was born, and as a freshman in high school, he would often pick up his baby sister from Nana Kris’s daycare, carrying her home in a Kelty pack or stroller. I don’t know if he ever complained about this arrangement—he certainly claimed that he had to do it because Veronica and I would whine too much! Regardless, Dana was smitten. Even when, as the infamous story goes, he was happily lying on his back, holding a smiling, tiny Olivia over his face and she spit up directly into his mouth…
And then… Luke arrived. Then Gloria. Then Tianna and Zoe.
I’m not sure at what point Dana caught the baby bug, but he certainly caught it. Dana loved newborns. LOVED newborns. If you were having a baby, he would show up at the earliest moment he could to hold that baby. With the exception of our brother Zak, Dana was at each of our siblings’ births. He was “the baby whisperer.”
A typical example: my son Simón was born when Agustín was only 23 months old, and Edwin and I were exhausted with a newborn and a toddler. Dana was working nights at the time, and for the first several weeks of Simón’s life, he would occasionally drop by early in the morning after his shift, tell us to stay in bed, and whisk away the baby to the sofa. Once there, he would unzip his orange hoodie, place the baby on his chest, and zip the snug little newborn back up.
If you were one of the precious babes for whom he cared, he would suffer you to continue growing until you hit age four, and then you were permanently frozen at that age. When one of these babies, Hope, was about 16, I asked Dana how she was doing. He told me that he had been teaching her to drive, which was a wonder considering she was only four years old.
Some people might say that Dana had a “servant’s heart”—he was always quick to offer help and to follow through with it. You’re painting your fence? Sure, he could help. You’re moving across the country and could use an extra set of hands? Count him in!
Maybe it’s because of my relationship to him, but rather than call these actions friendly or generous, I prefer to say he was brotherly; he was a brother to all. He was stubborn, would argue with you and almost never be convinced he was wrong, and at times he relished making people uncomfortable. And yet, he would adopt you into his family in a heartbeat, would care for you and let you know you could depend on him.
Dana was ambitious, but not in the ways typically valued in our society. He would say he didn’t want a house, didn’t want to become too sedentary, but he did have a shed at our father and step-mother’s house where he stored books, games, and had a writing desk. Above his desk, he had posted a handwritten page of five-year goals. He wanted to be writing full-time, making games as a hobby, and earning a substantial amount of money doing so. He wanted to be able to pay off family’s debts, set up funding for his siblings’ and nephews’ education, and give loan money to friends. “I want to be productive enough and wealthy enough to protect the people I love,” he wrote. For himself, he only wanted for his car to be in good repair, equipment to continue writing, and custom “clothing made to my specification in bulk.”
I wonder if Dana developed this fraternal identity growing up as “Brother Dana” in our church– we all referred to one another as “brother” or “sister.” Perhaps Dana saw all of humanity as a huge blended family of misfit siblings, children of the Creator. And in that sense, he was not only my brother, but your brother. I don’t think he would have it any other way.
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