This December, a small package arrived in the mail.

Inside the package was a jewel case and a note that began:

Hi Chris!

Since your reminiscence was in Brian’s memorial, representing the younger generation, I thought I’d send you a copy of the service. You probably will recognize most of the musicians, since your dad performed with them.

The “Brian” is Brian Howard, who died one year ago on Tuesday. The reminiscence is something I wrote here the day after, which Brian’s wife Lynne asked if they could read at his memorial service.

In the jewel case are two DVDs which hold a recording of Brian’s service. I’ll be honest: I haven’t watched them. (Or listened? I’m not even sure if it’s an audio or video recording.) I just don’t think I’m quite ready to do it yet. Somehow, at 31 years old, I’ve never been to a funeral. Not once, not yet. Not because I’ve avoided them, but because I’ve somehow known only a very few people who have died, and those few have had funerals far away at times when I was unable to travel.

And so, as special as it is to have been part of Brian’s service, I can’t yet bring myself to see it. Instead, I’m going to leave it on my desk. One of these days I’ll pop it in and listen to the music they played to honor him. Just not yet.

But Brian is on my mind today, and ever since the day this package arrived in the mail. Ever since NPR included him in a list of remarkable lives lost in 2010. Right now, I’m finding the memory of Brian’s calm, warm spirit extremely…timely. I mean, I’m a firmly non-superstitious person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t reflect on synchronicity.

For me, the synchronicity of this moment is in the bubbling excitement I feel as the little company I founded begins to find its legs. Sometimes I get so excited I have trouble sleeping. I wake up euphoric at the friends I get to work with and the stuff we get to make. And then, behind the euphoria, a little kernel of fear, telling me that these things go in cycles, that there will be a slog, that something hard is coming, that there will be endless surprises, and not all of them will be good.

And then, behind that, there’s Brian.

Calm, self-deprecating Brian. Goofy Brian. Brian, who was one of the original four people who who made a computer that changed the world, and you’d never, ever know it until someone else told you.

Brian, who did not seem to consider his work at Apple anything more (or less) special than…. well, than any other honest, hard-working job.

For the last couple of months, a quiet, kind Brian has been hovering in the back of my consciousness. He quietly listens, as he did in real life when I was a kid, to my slightly manic scheming and my eager, excited ideas. He doesn’t say much back. He’s just calm, and he listens, and maybe he even smiles a bit at the corners of his eyes.

A year before he died, Brian wrote:

Personally, I am not worried about my life ending. Really, it will be the people around me that have to deal with it, going on living with a me-shaped hole in their lives. For me it will just be over, so no concern of mine. …But I’ve had a good life, long enough, in a beautiful place, doing interesting things, surrounded by great friends and family. For me, that’s enough. And it’s a lot.”

— Ruminations on chemo, etc., February 9, 2009

After the last time we saw Brian and his wife Lynne, on a visit to Tennessee, Lynne sent me a picture she had snapped on the trail where we hiked.

I remember this moment very clearly. I was sitting on the trail alone, watching the waterfall. Brian came over and sat next to me. We sat there in complete silence, and stared at the water. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him over my shoulder. I wanted to say something, but there really wasn’t anything to say. So we just sat. I am grateful to have this picture, but I don’t need it. I was paying attention very very hard during those few minutes, so I remember them pretty well.

I’m excited about this year. I’m hopeful, and I’m stoked. But if ever I get a little too excited, too far down that road of what might happen, what could happen, what I hope will happen, what I fear will happen… there are waterfalls all around me, and it’s awfully good to just sit and hear the water for a while.