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By Rick Rozman
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I thought we were just two brothers drinking beers. Ten years later, I wonder if he was telling me how to say goodbye.
The last time I saw my little brother Ronnie alive, we sat in my family room drinking Labatts and somehow started talking about our funerals. I have no idea why. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was because we were getting older and had reached that point when death stops being something that happens only to grandparents and people on the evening news. Or maybe Ronnie knew something I didn’t.
We agreed immediately on one thing: Neither of us wanted a traditional funeral. No coffin. No somber room filled with flowers. No people whispering around our bodies about how peaceful we looked. I told Ronnie I wanted a party. Play my favorite music. Drink some beer. Tell funny stories about me. If somebody had an embarrassing one, even better. Ronnie laughed. Then he told me what he wanted. Cremation. A party. Labatt beer. Pepsi, his favorite pop. Soft pretzels, pizza and appetizers. Basically, Ronnie wanted his funeral catered like a Saturday afternoon watching football.
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We laughed about it. But then something changed. Just for a moment, Ronnie got serious. I remember looking at him and thinking: Why does this suddenly feel like he’s giving me instructions? I noticed it. And then I let the thought go.
I wish I hadn’t.
Because when my brother walked down my driveway later that evening, climbed into his car and drove away, it would be the last time I ever saw him alive.
Ronnie was the youngest of six kids in our family. Six. All born during the 1960s. My sisters Sue, Sally and Mary came first. I batted cleanup in the fourth spot. Then came my sister Amy and finally Ronnie in 1969. The family joke was that our mom spent the entire decade pregnant. We grew up in the kind of family I now realize I was incredibly lucky to have. We laughed a lot. We were all very active in sports and activities, and my parents were constantly driving us to and from practices and games. Somehow, the same two parents raised six completely different human beings.
Ronnie may have been the most different of all.
People sometimes describe the youngest child as the entertainer, the one who learns to command a room because five older siblings have already taken up most of the oxygen. That wasn’t Ronnie. He was quiet. Shy, even. He never needed attention. When we were kids, he was my little buddy. Whatever ridiculous idea I had, Ronnie was generally willing to follow along. He was painfully skinny, so I gave him the nickname Twig. Years later, after he started lifting weights and became incredibly strong and muscular, the nickname made no sense. He looked a lot more like an oak tree than a twig. Didn’t matter. He was Twig for life. My kids called him Twig. Everybody did.
But if I had to tell you one thing about Ronnie, I wouldn’t start with how strong he was. I’d tell you about his laugh. When Ronnie really got going, his laugh became this high-pitched, uncontrollable cackle that seemed completely wrong coming from a guy built like a linebacker. That only made everyone laugh harder. Then Ronnie would realize we were laughing at the sound of his laugh, which made him laugh harder, which made the rest of us completely lose it. I can still hear that laugh.
As adults, my siblings and I went in different directions. Most of us went to college. Ronnie essentially looked at that path and said, “Screw that.” That was Ronnie. He didn’t rebel against anything. He didn’t announce that he was finding himself. He just chose his own road. He became a truck driver, one of those people society rarely celebrates but quietly depends on.
He showed up. Every day. On time. He never called in sick. He treated everyone with respect, and his employer and co-workers loved him. After finishing his deliveries, he was the kind of guy who would come back to the warehouse and ask if anybody needed help before he went home. Nobody was watching. There wasn’t an award involved. It was simply who he was.
If I had to describe Ronnie in five words: Loyal. Dependable. Trustworthy. Kind. Tough. But Ronnie wasn’t a tough guy. There’s a difference. He didn’t brag. He didn’t start fights. He didn’t need anybody to know how strong he was.
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Years ago, one of our former football coaches told me a story Ronnie himself had never mentioned. Ronnie was in high school gym class when a bigger kid, a bully, deliberately fired one of those red rubber dodgeballs from close range directly into a girl’s face. She started to cry. Ronnie walked over and told the kid to apologize and make sure she was OK. The kid told Ronnie to mind his own business. Then he pushed him. Then he threw a punch.
That was a big mistake.
The confrontation ended quickly, and it’s safe to say the girl received her apology. Our coach later told me Ronnie was one of the nicest kids he had ever coached—and one of the toughest. The part I love most about that story is that Ronnie never told me about it. That may tell you more about him than the fight itself.
When I married Wendy in 1989, I had plenty of people I could have asked to be my best man. There was never really a decision. I wanted Ronnie standing next to me. My little brother. Twig. My best friend. I used to tell him that if I ever ended up in jail, there was only one person I’d call. And he’d always give me some version of the same answer. “Don’t worry. I’ll come get you.” It was one of those little jokes between brothers that doesn’t sound especially profound when you’re saying it.
Now it does.
Ronnie never married or had children of his own, but he became a huge part of my kids’ lives. My daughter Meghan was his goddaughter, and they had an especially close bond. Christmas with Uncle Ronnie was an event. He found the coolest, strangest gifts, and even the wrapping became part of the entertainment. Once, he put Meghan’s present inside box after box after box. She had to unwrap what seemed like 20 of them before she finally got to the gift. That was Ronnie. He didn’t just give you a present. He turned it into a story.
My sons, Mitch and Mason, adored him too. Some of my favorite memories are the days Ronnie would come over early in the day, and the four of us would conduct our own miniature Olympics. Basketball in the driveway. Football. Soccer. Wiffle ball in the backyard. Then downstairs for ping-pong, darts and Golden Tee. After that, Ronnie would play video games with the boys. We never called those days special. That is one of the cruel tricks life plays on us. You usually don’t know which days were special until you can’t have them anymore.
At the end of those marathon sessions, Ronnie would walk toward his car, sore and limping from doing far more than our aging bodies had any business doing. He’d reach the bottom of the driveway, turn around and say, “Let’s do that again soon.” And he’d smile.
God, I miss that smile.
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The final time he came over was one of those days. Sports. Games. Kids. Laughing. Then, after things quieted down, he and I sat together drinking a few Labatts. That was when we started talking about death. Eventually, it was time for him to leave. I watched him limp down my driveway, sore from once again trying to convince himself he was still 25. He reached his car and turned around. “Thanks for this. Let’s do it again real soon.” I waved. He smiled. And for reasons I still can’t explain, I felt sad as I watched him drive away.
A few weeks later, on a Friday afternoon in 2016, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. It was Ronnie’s employer. He had collapsed while making a delivery at a golf course, one of his regular customers. I was his emergency contact. They told me he was being taken to a nearby hospital. I became strangely calm. Maybe the mind does that when the heart already knows something it isn’t ready to hear.
I drove to the hospital. When I arrived and asked about my brother, the people there looked at me differently than hospital employees normally look at somebody asking for directions. They asked if I had spoken to the police officer. No. They told me to wait. A few minutes later, I saw an officer walking toward me. Before he reached me, he dropped his head. He couldn’t look me in the eyes.
And I knew.
I don’t remember much of what he said. I remember the beginning. “I’m so sorry to tell you…” Everything after that became noise. My little brother had suffered a massive heart attack and died almost instantly. Ronnie was 47 years old. Forty-seven. There are certain numbers that become permanently attached to people. He should have had dozens more birthdays. Instead, my brother will always be 47.
I called Wendy. I called my sister Sally. Then I went home and had to find words to tell my three kids that Uncle Ronnie was gone. There are moments in life for which language is completely inadequate. That was one of them.
It has been almost 10 years now. And here is something grief has taught me. People don’t leave your life all at once. They leave it in pieces. You reach for your phone because something funny happened and, for half a second, forget you can’t call them. You hear a song. You see an old photograph. You watch your children grow older and realize the person who loved them so much isn’t here to see who they became. You remember an ordinary afternoon playing basketball in the driveway and suddenly understand that you would give almost anything to have that ordinary afternoon back.
I used to think grief would be about missing the big things. Birthdays. Christmas. Weddings. Milestones. I was wrong. I miss the little things. I miss him limping down my driveway. I miss that ridiculous high-pitched laugh coming out of a man built like a brick wall. I miss knowing there was one person in the world I could call no matter what happened. A person who, if I called him from a jail cell at three in the morning, wouldn’t ask what the hell I’d done until after he got in the car.
“Don’t worry. I’ll come get you.”
Maybe that is what love really looks like. Not grand speeches. Not perfect words. Sometimes love is simply having somebody in your life who will always come get you.
Every year on Ronnie’s birthday, my family drinks Labatts and raises a beer to The Twig. The nickname still makes me smile. The skinny little kid grew into one of the strongest men I ever knew. But what made him strong had very little to do with muscles. It was loyalty. Kindness. The instinct to step between someone vulnerable and someone trying to hurt them. The willingness to show up. Again and again.
I’ve thought hundreds of times about that last conversation in my family room. Did Ronnie somehow sense something? Was it a coincidence? Was it simply two brothers drinking beer and talking about the strange things brothers sometimes talk about? I don’t know. Maybe I never will. What I do know is that Ronnie told me what he wanted. And when the unimaginable happened, we gave it to him.
There was no traditional funeral. We celebrated him. There were Labatts. There was Pepsi. There were pretzels and pizza. There were stories. There was laughter. And there were a lot of people discovering that one quiet man had somehow occupied an enormous amount of space in their lives.
I would give almost anything to sit beside my brother one more time. I’d crack open two Labatts. I’d tell him about my kids and everything that has happened since he left. I’d remind him of some stupid story he’d pretend not to remember. And I’d do everything I could to get him laughing hard enough to hear that crazy cackle one more time.
Then, before we finished our beers, I’d remind him of what he said to me years ago. Because when my own time eventually comes, I’m counting on him to keep his word.
I don’t pretend to know exactly what happens after this life. But I like to imagine there is someplace beyond it. And somewhere there, my little brother got there first. Maybe he’s waiting. Quiet. Strong. Probably holding a beer.
And when I finally arrive and see Twig again, I think I know exactly what he’ll say.
“Don’t worry. I told you I’ll come get you.”
Rick Rozman is a husband, dad, grandpa, former college baseball player, longtime mortgage professional and lifelong storyteller who writes about family, loss, love, travel and the moments that stay with us.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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