I want to start by thanking my mom and aunt Sheri for being with him these last few months and for putting their lives on hold to care for him. Together we were able to give him the support and love he so deserved as his body slowly and then quickly began to fade away.

All the people here, friends and family, show us how many lives he affected. Although our loss gathers us together today, I take comfort in how Benjy’s energy and positivity lives on in each of us.

When I was young, Benjy and David took great care of me and made me feel like I belonged as their brother. Despite our age gap, they made me feel like an equal. And I’m really grateful to both of them for shaping me into the person I am today.

Benjy was 10 years older and I always looked up to him as the cool older brother. He was aware of the world in a way I wasn’t — and had very strong opinions about all of it. If you wanted to know what bands or movies he liked, his bedroom told you clearly. He had posters plastering the walls and ceiling. And he let me partake in those interests.

On a long drive, he burned a custom CD to listen to for himself and burned me a duplicate copy. He would tell me to hit play at the exact same time as him on our portable CD players, so that we could listen together. He shared that love of music with me up until his passing, always recommending new songs.

When I was 11, my parents somehow let me go alone to visit him in college, and stay at his makeshift fraternity house where he was president. That whole weekend he brought me along to everything he did, and he never acted like taking around his much younger brother was ever a burden. He was always excited to show me new things and see my reaction. For whatever reason, he decided that was the weekend to visit Tijuana, and of course he brought me along.

As we grew older, our relationship evolved into that of close friends. At one point I was living with Benjy while working with David. And we all lived within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco. We were lucky to have had such a positive connection and to get along so well.

Benjy got to spend a lot of time the last 5 years traveling the world, and I am grateful I got to join him for parts of it. In other countries, he liked to ask locals which one of us they thought was the older brother; if they said it was me it made him smile. Our age gap never felt so broad because his spirit and energy always kept him young at heart.

When we were in Japan, he bought us tickets to see a baseball game. Part of his motivation was to have someone to share his many opinions on Japanese baseball with, and part of it was to just see my reaction to it all.

We made memories traveling all over the world together and thanks to his photography skills we have the photos to remember those trips. Mostly taken in poses like this or this.

We bonded through his sense of humor. Benjy was someone you could laugh with easily. Early on he taught me the importance of not taking yourself too seriously. He was a master of light hearted teasing. For me it ranged from my messy eating to my insistence that he had to watch Breaking Bad because of how “critically acclaimed” it was.

And if he found something funny, you better believe he brought it up a thousand more times. Once he decided on the nickname “JonnyFive” for me (a reference to the movie Short Circuit), he would shout “Johnny Five is alive!!” pretty much every time I entered a room.

We also bonded over his life philosophy. Benjy was never one to settle in any aspect of his life that made him unhappy. As he put it: “Enjoy the journey. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Another way of putting it, from the author Sam Harris: “The truth is none of us know how much time we have in this life, and taking that fact to heart brings a kind of moral and emotional clarity to the present, or at least it can. And it can bring a resolve not to suffer over stupid things.”

These last few months, Benjy knew his time was short, but even then there was no way to know exactly how much time he had left. That emotional clarity came for Benjy toward the end. His heart was fully open and he helped me open my heart too. The tragedy of the situation helped simplify reality to the basic emotions of compassion and love for each other.

He continually expressed his love and gratitude for all the support of everyone here and if you got the chance to visit him he made that apparent. The support provided him the strength to keep living for the time he had left.

His time with us was cut short, but the time he had he fully embraced, doubly so after his first fight with cancer four years ago.

Instead of going back to jobs he never had a passion for, he spent his time pursuing hobbies of photography, writing and fitness. He took trips he had dreamed about. When the Giants won the World Series, Benjy cried. When the Warriors won the championship, I’m not sure if he cried, but he was very happy.

Part of his advice is to not always let tomorrow be tomorrow. Another quote from Sam Harris: “As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. The past is a memory; it’s a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated; it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this.”

The struggle Benjy went through helped me to appreciate the fragility of life and to fully embrace the present moment. It motivated me to take on a meditation practice as a tool to help the mind see the present moment clearly. I keep a canvas of his favorite photo he took in front of me so that it may be the first thing I see when I open my eyes after a meditation.

When I opened his laptop in preparation for today, there was a document open with just the words “Dr. Boom” written on it. It was going to be a character in one of his novels. But the original idea came from me, as a 13 year old, creating a character for myself called the “Pink Wizard” (clearly we have a non-judgmental family). I told Benjy about this, and he came up with the super villain “Dr. Boom”. Every time the “Pink Wizard” came up with a new superpower, Dr. Boom would have a new way of counteracting it. Seeing that document open felt like Benjy leaving me one last joke, teasing me one last time.

I will miss Benjy dearly. I will miss laughing with him. I will miss traveling with him. I will miss his opinions on any and everything.

I will remember him through our shared experiences. And I will try to embody his life philosophy: appreciating each moment and pursuing happiness in whatever form it comes.

He was a special brother and human. Thank you all for sharing in his memory.