Frank Iero, guitarist of the prolific rock band My Chemical Romance paid tribute to his former bandmate Bob Bryar, who was found dead in his Tennessee home last week at the age of 44.

In a post shared to Instagram on Tuesday, Iero wrote that he had “spent the past few days thinking about Bob a lot and the person I knew him to be,” and looked back at the memories that stood out the most. Iero remembered the drummer as an “engima of sorts,” explaining that he “often inhabited both ends of any spectrum at the same time.”

“He was my friend and my bandmate, but he was also a stranger to me for most of my life,” Iero continued, adding that while after their time together as a band they would “trade a meme or photos of Lego builds,” eventually someone “would leave the other on read and an indeterminate radio silence would follow.”

While Iero said that he would “hear rumblings of what he might be up to or some shit he’d stirred up online,” that wasn’t the person he had gotten to know. The musician went on to say that Bryar was “incredibly talented” and “confident enough in his abilities to convince us that he was the right drummer for our band” without any of them hearing him play. Iero also recalled Bryar as someone who was “eccentric as fuck” and “funny as hell,” and who was capable of being “mean” enough to “cut you in half,” but also the “first one” to give you whatever he had if it would help you out or “put a smile on your face”

Over the years, Iero said he found Bryar to “incredibly self conscious and introverted whenever he felt placed outside of his comfort zone.”

At times, Iero said that Bryar was the bandmate he “related to the most” because his “humor was dark as fuck just like mine.”

In his tribute, Iero said Bryar “loved animals,” and that a tragic incident that led to the death of Bryar’s dog “wrecked him emotionally.” Iero said that afterwards, Bryar “just couldn’t keep it together anymore” and that his “sadness, anger and distrust were too much to handle and took over all aspects.”

In 2021, Bryar auctioned off the drum kit used during the My Chemical Romance’s 2005 MTV VMAs performance to raise money for the Williamson County Animal Control and Adoption Center in Tennessee. The following year, he announced he would sell his original Black Parade uniform to help “abandoned and sheltered animals in areas of Florida and South Carolina that are affected by Hurricane Ian.”

In a short post shared on Monday, My Chemical Romance paid tribute to their former drummer, and said, “It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Bob Bryar, our former bandmate and an important part of the history of My Chemical Romance.”