Bruce was a wonderful older brother.  He was eight years older than me, so I have very few memories of him being younger than 15 or 16.  He used to babysit me and always came up with creative ways to get me to go to sleep, which I never wanted to do.  Another early memory was Bruce removing everything from the top shelf of his closet and both of us climbing up there and playing “tree house”.

We never fought like other siblings, not as children and never as adults.  I can’t remember ever having an argument with Bruce.  He was always easygoing and always teaching me things.

Unlike my friends’ older siblings, he wasn’t into the music of the 50s and early 60s.  I would go into his room and we would listen to classical music while he fiddled around with his chemicals or his microscope.  When the music changed in the late 60s Bruce became more interested.  He liked the Grateful Dead and The Band and other music of that genre.  I was so excited that he took me to Woodstock when I was 17 because my parents would never have let me go, if he wasn’t chaperoning.

As the years went by, we always talked on the phone but unfortunately he lived too far to visit very often.  I missed not being able to share more holidays with Bruce and Mindy and their sons.  Now that we drive back and forth to Florida we have been able to visit more often in the past four or five years.  He left us too soon.  I was looking forward to more great times with him.  I take comfort in the fact that his suffering never reached the point that some people with this terrible disease reach.  He was still talking and walking before he died.  I spoke to him a few days before and he still sounded like Bruce.  I will miss him very much.  I loved his interesting stories and his brain teasers.  I loved him.

Who knows how many years I have known Bruce.  We go way back to the days where I babysat the boys and even before that.  One evening stands out in my mind where Bruce was so excited almost giddy to show us kids the secret room in his house upstairs behind a panel in the wall.  He always saw everything with a sense of wonder and adventure.  Bruce will truly be missed!