“I had to be here,” she said, sitting in the chapel after the service. “It’s been overwhelming, all the love.”

Many at the cemetery had only a vague sense of who the veteran was. They knew he was homeless and lived with PTSD, alcoholism and depression. They knew he loved Bruce Springsteen and had traveled from California to Sheridan. They knew he deserved a hero’s funeral.

But Diane knew her brother as the boy who loved to play soldier as a child and who loved to go bowling. She knew him as the resourceful man who worked hard to overcome his addiction and keep a job. She knew him as a man who was haunted by the work he did as a sailor in Vietnam and by a turbulent family history but continued to live as best he could.

Stephen would call her every few years — always from a different cell number. She had last heard from him in 2010, but the number he called from was out of service when she tried to call back. His post office box was closed. He had disappeared, again.

More than anything, she feared that her brother would die alone on the streets. That he would be buried in an anonymous grave in an unknown part of the country. That she would never know whether he had passed. That his death would never be marked.