My brother

I watched the funeral again the other day. Seeing the slide show, I hadn't realised before that I could have been in almost any of the photos of Dan throughout his life. That's an obvious thing for his brother to say, but it really hadn't hit me before just how intertwined our lives were. You don't know normal until you stop and take a step back to look at it. I don't remember much growing up, but I do remember riding my bike in the garden when I would have been 4 years old. I remember coming round the side of the house and seeing an ambulance parked in the driveway. I went in the house and there was my mum holding my new baby brother. We grew up together on the Isle of Wight. We played like brothers do and we fought like brothers do. When it came time for me to go to university, I moved up to Sheffield because Sheffield is a long way from the Isle of Wight. When it came time for Dan to go to university, he moved up to Sheffield because Sheffield was where I had gone. In a way, then, that makes me responsible for his time here in Sheffield. He wouldn't have been here if I hadn't come here. And there was crap in Dan's life but that wasn't because of Sheffield. No, Sheffield was the city he chose to settle in, the people he chose to surround himself with. He loved this city, he loved the countryside around it, he loved the quirky humour that Sheffield has, that sometimes comes out in the graffiti on the walls of this city, he loved the trees within it and he loved the clouds above it. Those of you who knew Dan from his time in Sheffield, we had good times here, didn't we? The end of Dan's life was very sudden and a lot of you weren't able to be there for his death. But you were there for his life, and for that I thank you. I thank you for the positive effect you had on my brother's life, for the fun he had and for the joy that you brought him.

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