My Brother Died
/By Don Varyu
Jan 2026
y brother, Dick Varyu, died last fall. I know you never knew him, but I wish you had. He would have made your life a little better…a little brighter…because that’s what he did for everyone. He had a gift.
This was something easy to spot, right from the first time you met him. Smiling within a halo of wild curls, you never knew a person who had more fun living his life; and that aura would just envelop you. He had stories—man, did he have stories. He knew the background of some B-list actress you never heard of. He knew the lifetime batting average of some old-time Chicago Cub who even most Cub fans had long forgotten. Then there were the 180 Seinfeld episodes ever aired; I swear he could recall a plot nuance or line of dialogue from every one of them. His wife eventually had to evoke a rule that only one Seinfeld reference could be uttered in her presence per day. Because once he got going, he was a hard man to stop.
And along with the stories, there were the jokes and the puns and the impossibly crafted quips. That’s just how his mind worked.
t’s important to understand that all this wasn’t just reserved for the people he knew. I always claimed that if we walked into a Walmart together anywhere in America, and I pointed to some random stranger and said, “I dare you to go over and start talking to that guy”…well, if he did, the two of them would have been laughing together inside two minutes.
His gift was building a personal bridge to another person—any other person—using just what he could intuit with within a few seconds of conversation. Any newcomer would quickly and willingly walk up and join him on that bridge. That was his superpower. A friend says, “I always noticed it in his eyes…in his gesture. He was just so welcoming.” And he did not use that p[ower just to make you feel like you were his friend—he honestly wanted you to be friends. That shone through.
ut beyond a seemingly carefree exterior lay something far deeper. He was loyal, reliable and responsible in his connection to friends and family. He wouldn’t just say he’d be there—he’d be there for you. On this, he was resolute.
He also existed within a life plan that required organization and structure…schedules and timelines…rules and boundaries. Among his foundations were the ten commandments, and a full devotion to the Catholic church. Only serious illness could keep him from Sunday mass.
And there was also propriety. The funny things he said never stooped to include an f-bomb, or nearly any other form of profanity. The use of such words in his presence would never bring reproach from him…but you could see an almost imperceptible wince at the corner of his eyes. He kept his standards to himself. But they were always there.
And then, one more layer, even closer to the very core. In the end, what he really wanted most in life was to help you. Making you laugh was just one method.
Years ago, my family set off on a cross-country road trip. When we made it from the west coast to Chicago, we stayed with my brother and his wife. One morning, on their back veranda, our twin daughters (about ten at the time), told their uncle about their budding love for playing soccer. And one added that she had also started to play basketball but was having problems getting the ball into the hoop—she would hound on defense but she couldn’t shoot.
This came in the middle of a sweltering Chicago summer, but my brother quickly had everyone immediately swing into action. That afternoon, he took us to the sizzling asphalt court at his neighborhood park. This included both girls and my wife. He began to demonstrate the proper technique for shooting a basketball. How it should rest on the hand and he fingers…then the proper extension of the wrist and forearm…how the elbow should be aligned…and where vision should be focused. This went on for over an hour, but no one seemed to notice the heat. He was helping people who he loved, and it was impossible to watch this without feeling that love.
This is also the very skill that he repeated countless times for his students and clients…during a career as a personal trainer and assistant basketball coach at a community college.
This sense of helping was the truest sense of him. Whether telling a story or setting up for a free throw, what he really desired most was to help you. He was a man who fully and honestly cared.
eing a child of the boomer generation, my brother learned the code of acting tough on the surface no matter what…and never admitting to pain or fear. I knew him every minute of his life, and I knew the nature of his demeanor very well.
However, his final weeks of life were spent mostly with a breathing tube painfully thrust down to his lungs. He could speak almost no words. But there was meaning in his eyes; something I never saw before. My composed and stoic brother was confused…and scared. I could see him struggling for an answer: was it all really going to end like this?
miss him on so many levels. Let me explain one of them this way…
From the day we’re born, our parents start talking to us. Of course, we don’t understand, but shortly we’ll start speaking that language. Everyone has a birth language…and the smartest and hardest working of us might even learn a second or third one in our lives.
Today, counsellors and therapists have also introduced a new form of language—a “love language.” These are the words and gestures and actions by which we express love for one another.
But I also say there’s something beyond that; I think of it as a “memory language”; The idea is not complicated. Sometimes, in your family or among others, something might happen that will forever be remembered by everyone who experieced it. Sometimes is comes down to a simple phrase…even a single world. For example, maybe you were at a fancy work dinner, and somehow the boss stumbled and spilled a cranberry juice all over his wife’s white knit dress. From that point on, you could just say the words “cranberry juice” to anyone who witnessed it and they would instantly know exactly what you meant. It had become part of a joint memory language.
I could list dozens of examples that existed just between my brother and me. “Old Phil Greybeard,” “the Gold Lady,” “the green tart,” “don’t bruise the bread!” This stiff is all gibberish to anyone else. But a mention, even in the middle of an unrelated conversation, would immediately set us off laughing.
Aside from me, my brother was the last living member of my birth family. Our memory language is now gone forever; I am the last person who could ever understand it.
All of his friends and extended family know how much he cared…how much he did for us. It is such an injustice that in his final days, none of us could find a single way to ease his pain…to change his fate. There was no elixir to bring him back.
The world is a smaller place without him.
We are all made of vital pieces. For me, he was an irreplaceable one. There is no one in my life who I ever shared more laughs with. But now, in the space where those laughs once rang out, there will only be silence.
I have always loved him.
And now, I know I will always miss him.
