Brushstrokes of a Life Well Lived
Remembering My Uncle
The first time I realised that my Uncle Brian was an artist must’ve been sometime in the 90s when he and my Auntie Nicky came to visit us in Salt Lake City. Neither the hubby nor I can remember the exact year, but what I do remember is Uncle Brian taking a wee sketchpad everywhere we went to quickly capture the scenery. My memory is that he’d take those sketches and work some of them up into paintings but I must ask my cuz if this is true.
He died on New Years Day at the age of 94 and sadly, since I arrived in the UK on the 11th, I missed seeing him one last time by less than two weeks. His funeral happened once I returned home and for some reason the powers that be at the Cathedral were stridently unwilling to offer a livestream. But, late at night AU time, I was able to “attend” courtesy of a sneaky hip level Zoom hookup. I don’t have a large extended family and even though I’d just spent time with them in the freezing (and somewhat gloomy) northern hemisphere, it was good to “see” them again.
My vault of Uncle Brian memories is not huge but one of the strongest is from 1983. That was the summer two of my sisters and I spent a couple of months doing a tour of Europe. I know, it sounds like a lovely thing to do when you’re 20 and it was. Our tour meant freeloading off our family & friends in England, Germany, and Italy, convincing my cuz to travel with us and act as translator, and then seeing how many other countries we could tick off in the rest of our time.
The number of countries we visited eludes me but I do remember accidentally spending Bastille Day in Paris (what are all these people doing out on the streets? Ooh look, fireworks over the Eiffel Tower), absolutely loving The Sound of Music bus tour in Austria (& singing along to the soundtrack with a bus full of other idiotic Americans), being mistaken for a singing group while crossing the channel (could the Keene Sisters please report to the purser’s office), and between the three of us, purchasing 27 pairs of shoes!
Part of our freeloading *ahem* budgeting, meant we stayed at Brian and Nicky’s for a few nights. One of those night involved watching The Long Good Friday (did we rent it on DVD? ((must ask my cuz)) And wasn’t Bob Hoskins great? How did I forget Helen Mirren was part of the cast??) Uncle Brian had sneakily excused himself from the lounge so that during an especially tense moment of the film he could don a mask and literally scare the shit out of us (btw it worked but also, I do have highly strung startle reflex).
So, yes, Uncle Brian was a bit of a character. Here are some selected memories of him from the eulogy that my cuz gave:
Pretending to wipe away his own tears outside his house whenever people left and then dancing up and down when he thought they weren’t looking!
Hiding in the bushes at the end of his garden pretending he was a monster coming to get you, or after spooky films on TV going out and tapping on the window or limping along in a hood!
Having latterly also discovered some Nordic ancestry, sporting a Viking helmet on a canal boat on his 80th birthday, shouting at bewildered bystanders on the towpath that he was coming to pillage their village.
So back to his love of painting.
Beginning during Covid and via Zoom, he taught his grandkids:
As I’m sure you all know, Dad had a passion for painting - sparked by Mum - which saw him still teaching live classes and even via his iPad well into his 90s (the tinkle of paintbrushes in a glass, an oasis of calm with his pupils – often our daughters - listening intently to his advice. And then, at the end, his helpful, if diplomatic feedback, especially when an intended songbird looked more like a chicken!)
How lucky were they to see the example of not only a very kind and loving man but a creative one? He not only followed his passion all the way to the end but loved sharing it with others.
One final quote from the eulogy courtesy of my cuz via Shakespeare
As Mark Antony declared in his eulogy for Julius Caesar:
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world, 'This was a man!'”
I’m writing this because I want to honour my uncle in some smallish way but also to say that there’s a certain nobility in living a life marked by creativity. Vale Uncle Brian.
Thanks for reading,
xBec
Heads Up Announcements:
🤔The next episode on the Thread & Bones podcast drops tomorrow🙌
🙁Unfortunately the retreat I had planned for early April in the Hunter Valley has been canceled🫤
🤩I know it’s not even mid February but in March my yearly March MATness celebration will commence. Stay tuned for the details but if you can’t wait, or have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s an old post for you💪