Dylan W Berner, 56 of Seekonk Massachusetts died peacefully Tuesday, December 30, 2025 of an aspiration pneumonia after many years of living with Huntington’s disease.
He was born on October 28, 1969 in Salem, Massachusetts. The son of David Berner and the late Joan Berner of Marblehead, Massachusetts. A creative artist all his life, he most enjoyed drawing and painting his special imaginations. When not working on his own graphic novel and illustrations, he designed spectacular window displays for Tower Records full of enlarged album art and three-dimensional scenes from movies. There wasn’t a style he couldn’t recreate. His favorite projects included a humongous papier-mâché dinosaur and a stylized foam-core chair for Rob Zombie to sit in while he signed albums. That chair lived in his basement for years along with a bed of nails and an electric chair he also made! Luckily for his partner, the dinosaur did not. Later he worked for an event planning company and helped to make magical experiences for the event participants.
Work was never a focus of Dylan’s life though. He made time for just living in the world and appreciating being here. While he loved to travel and did so extensively, he was equally happy spending a day hiking in local woods, or sitting on the beach (which he did patiently for long hours waiting for Rachel to finish swimming despite his susceptibility to sunburn). He was comfortable in crowded cities, exploring the streets of NYC, Tokyo, Prague, Sydney, Lima and more, but he also enjoyed the quiet places like Death Valley, Angkor Wat at dawn, the Alaska tundra, a carriage road in Maine, or a peaceful sail on Buzzard’s Bay.
He was a cinephile whose deep knowledge of film could be relied upon to tell you who directed a movie long before AI. An expansive lover of music who never found a genre he didn’t find listenable (even grindcore). A collector of comic books and graphic novels who would have had a houseful of them had not his partner objected to ever moving them again. An adventurer who would try pretty much anything even if it was a struggle. He biked, paddle boarded, kayaked, xc skied, and swam for as long as he could. As each of these abilities was taken from him, he rarely complained. He knew from an early age that he might inherit Huntington’s Disease and that life could get difficult for him, and while there were times he despaired and raged, for most of his days he was grateful for the beautiful things’ life offered in the moment.
Dylan was quirky and weird and so very much his own person. He had a wonderful sense of humor, although his intense delight at jokes from the movie Airplane is controversial. And he was kind. Despite his love for angry music and disturbing art, his strange knowledge of different kinds of weaponry, he never hurt or said a mean word to anyone. He wasn't verbose - some of you may be thinking that's quite the understatement! - but he was a listener, a quiet rock, and he always tried to understand.
His openness, his creativity, his ability to be silly, to be loving, to drop his guard and just be completely honest and human is what made him who he was. A wonderful son, friend and partner who made the lives of the people he knew better for having known him.
Dylan is survived by the love of his life Rachel Bates with whom he celebrated 30 plus years together, his father David Berner, and many longtime friends especially Justin Harris. He is pre-deceased by his mother and his wonderful cat Monkey. A private burial will be held by the family.
He will be loved and missed every day.
“Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to the treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.”
—Robert Brault