A Big Brother Like No Other

I won’t write long today because, frankly, I don’t have it in me. My heart and mind are elsewhere.

You see, this week my big brother Neal passed away.  A few days ago, he experienced some sudden dizziness and disorientation that, it turns out, were the result of a brain bleed that, had he lived, might have severely incapacitated him.

So, I suppose, and at the very least, I should thank God for that smallest of favors.

But it doesn’t make the pain any easier – not for me, not for my surviving brothers, Michael and Terry, and, especially, not for my sister-in-law Doreen and her children and grandchildren.

But let me tell you quickly about Neal.

I know a lot of people think of me as, somehow, heroic for how much I’ve accomplished in my life, especially given I’ve spent most of it in a wheelchair. But I promise, if I had a hero in this world – from childhood on, in fact – it was Neal.  And that’s always been the case.

Neal’s whole life he carried himself with a maturity, if not a sense of duty, purpose, and spiritual oneness that belied his age -- whatever the age.  It was so palpable, in fact, that I swear sometimes I could see it about his head, like a halo. And I felt so calm and so at peace every time I found myself in his company, it was almost as though he had this innate ability to share his own sense of inner peace with anyone who drew near to him.

Early in his life, Neal had spent seven years in the seminary – four as a college undergraduate and three as a post-grad – studying to become a priest. And had he taken things to their logical conclusion, I’ve no doubt he would have become a pastor, a bishop of a diocese, or maybe even a cardinal.  Because that's how remarkable he was. But, as one who was always asking himself life’s toughest, deepest and most essential questions, and constantly looking inside while being brutally honest about who and what he found there, he left the seminary just days before taking his final vows.

Why?  My sense is, because after so many years of praying and so many nights of introspection and soul searching he realized that, ultimately, God had a different (and maybe even higher) plan for him.  He wanted him to become a husband and father, and to raise a family.

I’ve written before how during Sunday mass – at both Holy Family in Auburn and Most Holy Rosary in Syracuse – my brothers would regularly carry me up the aisle for Communion, for everyone to see.  And while Neal wasn’t the oldest of my siblings, I have no doubt he was the one who began that family tradition, because if a young man ever embodied the line, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” it was Neal McLane.

Make no mistake, my brother Terry remains my best friend in the world. As a kid, he was my roommate, my confidant, my biggest rival, and, very much so, the yin to my yang.  But Neal was something else entirely.  He was, as I said, my hero.

My big brother embodied the man I always wanted to someday be and the man who, even now, I find myself trying like hell to become.

Godspeed, Neal. I love you.  And I’ll miss you every day; that is, until God calls me home, too; and when you, He, mom and dad can, together, let me see for myself how much better I could have been – if I’d only been a little more like you.