Amy said

I'm so touched by all the people who are here. thank you. standing room only, macky would think this is very cool.

So you know when random memories keep coming up in your head, the same image pops up, you're not sure why. there's something that kept coming for me with macky. It was on Briggs Beach, a family beach in Rhode Island. Macky is about 4, i think; and I don't think he's seen the ocean before.

He went to the shore and watched as the water went in and out; he was amazed by the way the water ebbed and flowed. He started playing a game where every time the water started coming back, he would turn and run so he could stay just ahead of the waves, so the water wouldn't get on his feet. he had a smile and a look of utter joy on his face, i've never seen anything like it. the only person who had a look like that was his father, who was standing right next to him and playing the same game.

It was just one of those perfect moments that come to people in life that i was lucky enough to see.

I'm going to hold that image, the joy i saw, when i think of Macky. I saw versions of that face again and again over the years: watching a harry potter movie, running in and out of the human heart model at a philadelphia science museum; (he spent six hours in that museum, i took him there); playing basketball.

The smile got a little more sarcastic, a little mischievous as he got older; he'd kind of give me eye rolls and knowing smiles about pretty well-known family jokes or stories. (I won't repeat them here, they're pretty well known).

The other thing I'm always going to think about when i think about macky is his intellect; how brilliant he was.

He and i would have these long, thoughtful conversations about life, how to live it and how often people don't really live by their words. He was wise, an amazing observer of human behavior; he saw things in ways most people didn't. The world often didn't make sense to him and he spent a lot of time looking for answers in his own way; he was attracted to counterculture; meaning the music we're listening to today, Jack Kerouac and Siddhartha, a lot of things I hadn't heard of. But it was always interesting.

Because we were so far apart in age, our main link was Dad. And we did a lot comparing notes. We would have conversations that went, 'No, that didn't work when I was 12 either. Mm hm, he did that. And that.' Macky did the best impression of what Dad looked like when he had stopped listening to you, the exact look on his face ...

Jennifer and I didn't have a brother until we were teenagers; Macky was this unexpected gift that came into our lives. We got to have a brother. It's so hard to see that now through grief and pain. But that's what I'm going to hold as well when I think of Macky. He was a gift to us. And the fact that he confounded and exasperated us sometimes with his choices. The fact that he scared us by taking risks. And the fact that our hearts are broken because he left too soon, after coming back so far, doesn't make him any less of a gift.

The grief we feel now sometimes morphs over time into something else; maybe it will recede a bit, kind of like the water, and something else comes forward. And that will be eventually what remains of my memories of Macky: wise, joyful, smiling. And trying to run just ahead of the waves.