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…