Only the good die young, my brother was one

They say you can't pick your family. My late brother-in-law David had a great personality.
He was just incapable of conformity.
As a result, light switches he has installed all go down for "on" and up for "off." Most of our faucets go left for "cold," right for "hot."
He was also not a big fan of preventive maintenance. As a result, going out on his boat was always an adventure.
David, rest his soul, seemed to enjoy having things break down on him.
Having to fix things on the fly was his forte. Regular maintenance was too ponderous to even conceive.
"Where's the fun in that?" he'd ask.
It drove me nuts.
One time we put his boat in at Corson's Inlet, which is between Ocean City and Strathmere, N.J.
He loved to go to the Deauville Inn, which was on the Strathmere side of the inlet. You could pull the boat right up onto the beach.
On this day it was a little too cloudy for the beach so David, my son Elliott, who was about 7 at the time, and I were just going to go for a ride and maybe a little fishing.
That was the plan. Before I knew it, we were headed out through the breakwater and into the open ocean in a 16-footer that had a spotty performance record at best.
I lashed Elliott into a life vest as the theme song to "Gilligan's Island" played in my head.
We skipped along the rolling waves like a cigarette boat running from the Coast Guard.
Sure enough, we weren't 10 blocks up the Ocean City shoreline when the engine began to sputter.
Minutes later we were dead in the water. Seems Uncle Dave, as Elliott called him, forgot to mention the connector on his fuel hose was shot.
As we floated along on the waves the boy started asking questions.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing toward shore.
"That's Ocean City," I said.
"What's out there?" Elliott asked, pointing eastward.
"France," I said, eyeballing David.
"Relax," David replied as he jury-rigged a new clamp out of some of the flotsam and jetsam scattered on the deck.
David died suddenly when he was just 40 years old. It was almost four years ago.
Once or twice a year I'll accidentally scald myself while washing my hands in mom's kitchen.
And I'll smile and think I couldn't have picked a better brother-in-law.