"A nice day on the water"

For a number of reasons, yesterday was kind of rough. My parents sent a picture of the marker that has recently been installed at Ryan's grave. It looks nice enough, but that image and what it represents sent me (and the rest of the family) into some dark moments. I still click on the link to his online obituary and sometimes click through all the pictures. Last night, I found myself wanting more and did a google search for my brother's name. His name is relatively common (lots more Ryan Hanrahans than Heidi Hanrahans, for instance), so there were lots of hits, but other than copies of his obituary, nothing came up that was about/by/for him. After all, Ryan never did Facebook or had much of an online presence. Then I added the phrase "Rocky Point" and came across this link. It's just one post on a fishing site, but there's no doubt that Ryan wrote it.

"I took the kayak out this evening and did very well with bluefish with poppers on the fly. The fish were blitzing in schools about half an acre in size. I put down the fly rod and drifted below the surface with a spro bucktail and scored a 43 inch bass. my penn 4300 drag assembly blew apart during his first run but managed to land him after a long battle. It was a nice day on the water."

The entry is dated August 9, 2003...over 11 years ago. He would have been 28. I would have been about to turn 26. He was living with my parents and working in landscaping. I was in graduate school in Greensboro. I keep trying to remember more about what he was like then.What was our relationship like then? Was this a stretch when he was happy? It seems like it was. How did he feel about himself and his life then? What did he think about as he was out on the water? Why didn't he post on the site again? I wish there was more to read. More glimpses of him like this, doing what he used to love doing so much. There wasn't much fishing in the last years of his life, something that I always found so sad and frustrating.

But I do have this little paragraph to hold onto, a time when he was happy enough to actually write about it and share it. For that I am grateful.