My Pauly is gone.

I've been avoiding writing this. I don't want to feel the sad, but my brother is gone and I'll never get to see him again, finally make the time to hang out without kids. Find out what's really going on in his life now.
I'm supposed to say something at the "Celebration of Life" ceremony, otherwise known as a funeral. I don't want to be there, I don't want to talk. Who is it for? Not for Pauly. Not for me. Does anyone else care? What will it give them?
I have found comfort in hearing about his last days from his friends. What can I say that will offer any comfort?
They know he was loveable, poetic, private, smart, cheeky, or else why are they there? That I adored him truly was my own experience with him. That I used to compare boys to him, and want to be like Kerry. Those days in the blue house with his music and making food together eating together, were some of the happiest times in my life.
Listening now to his music makes me reminiscent of those days.
I just loved to make him happy, I don't know what it was in him that inspired that in me. He really looked out for me. He wanted the same for me I guess. I recall one day when I was about 10, waiting at the school gate for him to walk home with me. He ran across the school from a game of soccer or cricket to tell me that he wouldn't be walking home and then ran all the way back. So I wouldn't be waiting. Pretty impressive for a 16 year old boy. He never seemed to show if having a ten year old walking home with him was cramping his style. If I got hurt in our wrestling, I never let on to mum, would lie and say I had fallen rather than admit he hurt me. Despite many years of being ambushed down dark hallways, and tickled to tears.
Paul gave me my early education into music outside the top 20 charts. Sitting on his bed in the converted garage listening to Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. Some I just pretended to know more about to impress him, some I truly came to love. Having inherited his book collection I realise how many of my teenage reads were his. I got my guitar from him when he was the Jesus in Brashes. I wish I got to play with him.
One of the people who has truly known and loved me my whole life.
For a quiet person, he was very expressive with his words and his poetry. He even played at Improv theatre games. I remember his songs and poems that he started sharing with me after he had come back from his big holiday through Europe and staying in Melbourne and Victoria. He felt big feelings and had his music and words to share them in a quiet way when he was ready.
Kerry was a big love in both of our lives. Starting in his Sizzler days and for almost ten years after he shared his life with her until their lives went separate ways. He never shared as much of his loves and fascinations after that as my life turned towards babies and career and he stayed with his very simple life of music, books, friends, study and wine. Living the Uncle Pauly life through his sisters children and his friends.His friends really became the central part of his life in these years, but I still loved our talks at all the family gigs each year as we both insisted we needed to make time to see each other more often. I regret that we never made that happen, and it saddens me that he was just readying to push himself to new experiences and adventures when his life was cut short. He will never suffer the indignity of growing old, and cannot regret missed opportunities, but I hope that his last lesson to me is not to wait till later to have my adventures and to love everyone big while I can.