NOT MUCH OF A LEGACY

Content warning: loss, grief

Walking into his garage in Spain for the first time was hard. We all felt it. This was what my brother had to show for his 58 years. This was to be, it appeared, the limits of his legacy: an ancient, undrivable car, a pile of dusty cardboard boxes and some over-filled bin liners. The pile of boxes had fallen over and now leant, forlornly, against the back of the garage.

It got harder as we started going through it all.

Every now and then, one of us would find something and pause for a moment, just breathing quietly, waiting for a sudden flood of emotion to recede. Memories surfaced in surprising things and could not be prepared for. At various times, I was undone by: a photograph of his wife (she died 10 years ago); an old leather jacket; his, so-familiar, scrawlly signature on a contract , and a photo of him with laughing African colleagues, making that stupid face he always made when someone took his picture.

It helped to have others there: his best friend from school, whose eldest son was christened with both of my brother’s names but in reverse order, and a work colleague who’d know him in different parts of the world for over 25 years. He’d flown from Cyprus to Spain to be with us. Local friends too: the guy who has built a bar at his house and named it after my brother; the expat couple with a trailer who took everything we couldn’t find a home for to be dumped. And, of course my other brother, with whom I had travelled to Spain and who felt the deep sadness of it all just as keenly as I did.

It wasn’t all like that. In the evening we ate and drank well (rather too well in truth) and swapped stories of his outrageous antics and his spontaneous generosity. There was a lot of laughter. As the five-day trip progressed, we became more open with each other, more willing to give rein to our emotions. Generally that doesn’t come naturally to men of our generation, but the trust in which we held each other could be seen in our tears and the way we allowed each other space to shed them. Through the medium of our shared love for the same person, we formed a bond, one that we have committed to uphold via regular communications and future meetings.

We visited the vineyards and winery next to where my brother had lived. The winemaker and his wife shared their own sense of loss and talked of his generosity in letting them use his house while the winery was being built. When he was ready to move on, they had bought the house and the field of vines in front of it, and they invited us to share a drink on the terrace. We sipped the cool wine and watched the Spanish sun warm the grapes, just as we had when he was alive.

I was undone once more when I found they had completed a project often discussed with my brother and made a low-volume, boutique style wine, in part from the grapes we were now looking it. To name the wine, they used the name my brother had given his house.

By these things, his legacy is starting to emerge. It’s a stronger legacy than those sad-looking boxes had suggested: a wine made in his name, an old car brought back to the UK and restored, the book he wrote to help people with gambling problems, the African art that will hang on our walls, reminding us of him whenever we look at it.

And yes, part of his legacy will be a bunch of men of a certain age who found that, perhaps to their mutual surprise, they were able to cry in each other’s company.

By these things, he will live on.

Rather than wait till they return to the UK in the car, I paid for an extra bag on the flight and lugged through the airport these two carved heads from my brother’s collection of African art. They’re quite big, about 60cm tall. I think they’re rather stunning, but I’ve yet to decide where to put them.