A Belated Eulogy for My Former Brother-in-Law

In August, my ex-wife’s brother Ian passed away a couple of weeks before what would’ve been his 53rd birthday from lung cancer.

Ian was the only male and the youngest of four children in my ex-wife’s Canadian family. Was I terribly close to Ian? No, but he was a prominent part of my life when I first met and married his sister B, and it saddens me greatly to know he’s not on this earth any longer.

It’s taken me some time to write this eulogy. I’m not sure why.

Ian’s passing is a loss on multiple levels, of course, and one of them that I never considered until now is the death to the mutual memories of our shared times when we were young together in Toronto — times when I fell in love, got engaged, got married, and learned to love and live in a country that was not my own.

When I first met Ian, he was a goofy teenager. He was 19 years old and still living at home in the west end of Toronto with his parents and his beautiful sister and my future wife. The two older sisters were already married, and out of the family home. One sister lived as far away as Sweden.

So 33 years ago, I met Ian and B at the same time in their kitchen. I was brought there by my former college roommate Jim. I was in town for Jim’s wedding. B was Jim’s fiancee’s best friend. At first, I thought Ian was B’s boyfriend. Add I remember thinking, “Why was this attractive young woman into this goofy boy?” He was such a silly jabber-mouth and so immature.

Later that night, on our way back to his place, Jim informed me that Ian was just B’s little brother and that I’d be seeing a lot more of B over the course of the next week of wedding preparations. And so, B and I got to know each other very well during the days before the ceremony. In fact, by the time that the wedding day arrived, we were so comfortable with each other that the wedding photographer asked us, “So how long have you two been married?”

Less than a year later B and I would be married in Toronto. Ian attended along with the rest of his family. His presence at our wedding was not prominent, but he would be a regular part of my life and the first years of our marriage.