A Man Called Brian

Thank you for all the sympathy, both as replies to the last entry and in real life. I feel slightly awkward mentioning this whole thing to people because I feel that I'm somehow attention-seeking (I understand why people disable comments on entries with bad news now), but your words are very much appreciated.

I found it difficult to continue with my LJ during the last few days because it somehow seemed disrespectful to continue as if everything was normal. Brian's funeral was this morning, and because it was meant to mark the end of worrying about this, I want to talk about memories of him here. I wanted to say some of this at the funeral itself, but that duty had fallen to my dad - and he did a heroic job with his speech, with hardly any difficulty getting to the end.

I hadn't seen Brian in a few years, but when I was younger he used to almost always come to our house for weekends. Every time his arrival was an exciting event - at the time, mostly because he brought with him a pack of sweets for each of his nephews and niece. It was always Skittles for me, the awful but brilliant ovoids of pure toothrot. My parents were no doubt displeased with that, but despite his best efforts, I still have all my teeth.

Occasionally he would even bring a game round that he'd bought in Aberdeen on the way in - he was always young at heart and shared my fascination with computers. He was instrumental in starting my collection of now-abandonware, in fact. He eventually got a computer for himself, and had to be taught how to work it - my dad and I had to go round and fix things for him. He always described it as "the most expensive pack of cards I ever bought", as Solitaire and the rest of the Windows games were the only things he could get to run. He even appreciated my interest in game design itself (after laughing at my first few attempts when I was much younger).

He accompanied us to a local bonfire night one year, but my parents had got the time wrong and we arrived just after the last firework had been let off. We turned to go, disappointed, especially as our parents had decided against getting fireworks for our own back garden that year. When we got back, though, we found Brian stepping out of his van, and in his hands he had a huge box of fireworks which he'd bought behind my parents' back. At the time it was the greatest thing to have ever happened.

During the service I was surprised to find out that his nickname was "Titch" - I had always thought of him as quite tall, but he was the youngest brother in a family of eleven members. He had always been "Uncle Brian" to not just me, but seemingly everyone who knew him... he did a lot of work for people around my home. The service was a new experience for me - I had been to a couple of funerals before, but never for a family member. I thought that I'd got over things by the time I got there, but seeing the fantastic turnout that had come to see him off was very moving.

As I walked out of the chapel I looked at the floral tributes that were laid up against the wall of the crematorium. "TICH", the biggest one proclaimed in bright flowers. I decided not to point it out. But as I looked at it, and as I'm typing this now, I'm feeling far more frustration than sadness - he shouldn't have died, he was too good to everyone he knew. He is the first family member to die since my grandparents, but in many ways he took the role of a grandparent for me - the role of smuggling things into the house that my parents didn't want to allow. For that, he was fantastic.