Remembering Brian

Today it is five years since Brian died. We are a weird and tight little  remainder family, messed up but making it. 

With this in mind, we want to tell you how we acknowledged our beloved Brian (or Big Bad Bri to many) this year.

First - we decided to abandon Reuben (the only other family member left) to go on this big walking adventure and make a pilgrimage to Santiago. Was Brian  an avid walker you ask? NO! Did Reuben want to come with  us? Dunno we forgot to ask him! 

Next we decided to take some of Brian’s ashes with us. This is something we have done before. I think it’s special for us; we put a little bit of his ashes in a small bottle and take it with us, bringing him along for the ride. How can this go wrong you ask? Well, let’s just say the word spillage! 

So on the actual five year anniversary of his death, in a haze of exhaustion, euphoria and hysteria, the two of us washed up in Singapore’s Changi airport. We broke our journey there on that day deliberately because Brian loved Changi Airport- weird but true- especially  the  smoking garden. He was an easy man to please- a drink and a smoke was all it took! 

So in his honour we had a wine on the plane  and bought a packet of cigarettes to have one for him. 

Bad idea! The smoking garden, which used to be outdoors and gorgeously lushly greenly tropical and exotic has now become a utilitarian enclosed glass torture box where fat Asian men and scarey black-eyed men in coats who look like Russian slave traders, drag desperately on stinking cigarettes and blow smoke out  in aggressive puffs,  all the while staring fixedly at the floor. 

This is not an experience I would recommend- in fact if you don’t get dragged off by the slave traders, it’s still really dangerous. The  air is not breathable.  

Now we are stuck with a whole packet of cigarettes that cost a fortune and we have probably shortened our lives by even walking in there. 

But seriously, grief is a strange unknowable beast- the ebb and flow - lows and then the deeper lows. We remember him today with love... And slightly sore throats. 

But we are ok, we are intrepid, we are tough and girls can do anything - can’t they?? 

Lesley and Lulu xoxo