Let’s do this together

This is always my sad week of Remembrance.

Every year between November 7, when my little brother James died, and November 14, my late husband David’s birthday, I hit the pause button.

David would have been 55 this year, and James would have celebrated his 50th earlier this summer had he not died in 2016. I tick the years off the calendar and wonder how different my life would have been with both of them in it.

I don’t hear from any of David’s old friends much any more. Not that I mind, after all, 12 years is a long time not to get your round in at the pub.

But you may remember I had a reunion with my brother’s oldest best friends, Sarah and Jackson, back in the summer. It was a really beautiful day, spent laughing about my brother’s wry, dark humour and habit of always having an anarchic Will Self quote for any occasion.

But because Sarah hadn’t known James had died and didn’t attend the funeral, she wanted to know where he was buried so she could pay her respects.

However, at the time of James’s death, we discovered London was very full up with graves so it had made sense to cremate his body, and then have a ceremony to have his ashes interred with my granny and grandpa in Hampstead Cemetery.

But when it came to getting granny’s headstone removed and re-engraved, the cemetery proved unhelpful, my poor mum was still broken with grief and I was still on full-time mum duty with a demanding eight-year-old, so plans just got quietly put on hold.

All this came to a sudden head on the anniversary of his death last Monday, when Sarah texted me out of the blue. “I can’t find your brother’s grave,” she said, having made the long journey to North West London to visit it.

“Does he have his own headstone? Or is he with your grandparents?”

I was feeling out of sorts anyway. I miss the bugger, and I’d have liked my daughter to have had some close male relatives in her life, even if it was an unreliable musician with questionable taste in hats to cover his bald patch.

But I suddenly couldn’t remember exactly where he was buried, and I felt guilty for not having sorted the headstone out.

“Erm, go in the main gates and it’s on your right,” I told her, slightly panicking. It’s not very cool to lose your family’s grave, even if it does look exactly like the 60,000 others in the cemetery.

I couldn’t get hold of my mum as her phone was off, so I had to try and remember the grave’s location and describe it for someone who had never been there.

Poor Sarah must have spent hours going in circles, until finally I suddenly had a brainwave and she found them – but James’s name wasn’t on the headstone.

She was apologetic but relieved. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you. It’s just that I wanted to leave James a Terry’s Chocolate Orange because that’s the first present he bought me when we were 13 years old.”

I felt very touched that Sarah made the effort. And her visit has also given me the kick up the bum I needed to sort the headstone out. Otherwise granny is going to be wondering who left the Terry’s Orange Chocolate for her…

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Yours, Siobhan