This memoir is hard for me to write because as I try to recall things it saddens me to acknowledge that I perhaps didn't know my brother as well as I wish I had. However, he was my brother and I have always wished that I had a memorial to him, perhaps this will be that.
Born in December 1967, my younger brother Stephen was 23 months younger than me. Stephen, like me, was adopted when he was a baby, I don't have any details other than he was born in Glasgow and like me had been given up for adoption. I don't remember life without him, I was very happy to be his big sister.
Stephen physically was as opposite me as you could get, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, he had a long back and short legs for his size, I had dirty blonde hair and a short back with long legs. Family photos of us as children are comical. We had a family dog called Sheena and we both adored her, playing football with her in our back garden. Family life was generally happy enough when we were wee, our Mum stayed at home to look after us and the house and our Dad went to work 6 days a week, occasionally getting Saturdays off which meant we were taken swimming. I was a shy and very willing to please child, always wishing I had my brother's determination and spirit much more. He was far more true to himself than I was, and if he didn't want to do something he wouldn't! I vividly remember Stephen starting at the primary school we both went too, I was so proud to have a wee brother at the same school and spent my playtimes trying to make sure he was ok, I needn't have bothered, Stephen always got on fine without my interference.
When he started school he was sent to speech therapy to correct and slight stutter and lisp, I used to help him with his exercises. Sammy the snake slithers through long grass, we used to repeat over and over. Our childhood was not so bad, we definitely suffered at the temper of our Mum, I don't think we were actually that bad, just naughty in the way kids are. A new primary school was built in our area and Stephen was moved there as it covered the school zone we lived in, I remained at the old primary for another year until I moved up to our secondary school.
Stephen hated school, he actually refused to talk about it when he was older. Our Dad had already written me off as not that intelligent and I think he decided Stephen was the same too, nothing really could have been further from the truth.
During our early teen years we were a gang of two, watching Top of the Pops, Friday nights eating Findus French Bread pizza (how exotic) in front of Monkey Magic and spending the weekend buying new singles and listening to them as loud as we could. Stephen was a punk, I was a rocker, then he was a rocker and I was a punk. We shared hairspray and t-shirts and worked part time at the local supermarket where we used to annoy the manager by swapping our sections if we didn't like them! Stephen was the coolest brother ever, and once I started college all my new friends fancied him, always asking me to get him to come to parties. I loved those rebellious times, driving round in my banger of a car while Stephen got too cool for that and bought a Vespa.
Stephen left school with no exams, once again teachers assuming he was 'thick' and managed to get an apprenticeship with a local plumbers. That lasted about 6 months until Maggie Thatcher brought in the YOP/YTS programmes effectively killing off apprenticeships. Stephen moved up to Aviemore to work a season at the Coylumbridge hotel, only returning every once in a while with his bags of washing and sometimes with a punk girlfriend in tow. I was now at college, on quite a destructive path following the death of my boyfriend and we didn't spend much time with each other.
Stephen had taught himself to play guitar as a teenager, he was left handed and now I can't remember if he played a right or left handed guitar, I think he played right handed? He left his beautiful blues guitars to my sons, his nephews James and Liam, both play guitar very well, and the music that comes from these amazing D'Angelico guitars makes me feel as if Stephen is still here. Whilst still a teenager living in Glasgow, Stephen was in a band called 'If Only', he always said those were the two saddest words in the English Language, full of regret at not doing something.
And here is where my beautiful, bold and brilliant brother lived his life in a way that I always admired and I really wished I had told him that more. After various unfulfilling jobs in Glasgow, Stephen moved to Aberdeen and attended a degree access course for the University of Aberdeen. Of course he passed, and started his undergraduate degree in English and History as a mature student when he was 25. During the second year of his degree, his supervisor had a meeting with him to discuss why Stephen hadn't told the department that he was dyslexic, Stephen's answer to that was that he wasn't but he was encouraged to undergo testing where they showed that he was severely dyslexic however very highly functioning in his other IQ tests. He was offered extra help to complete his degree which he refused, saying that he wanted to complete it under his own merits. He achieved a 2:1 Joint honours degree in English and History. The first one ever on either side of my Mum and Dad's family to graduate from University. I am so proud of what he achieved, he inspires me to try and achieve as much as I can out of life without listening to what others think of me.
The 5 years that Stephen lived in Aberdeen were probably the time when we were closest in our adult lives, as I had moved up to Aberdeenshire with my job in 1992. It was really great to be able to spend time together, Stephen got on really well with my boyfriend/then husband Paul and as we started our family we shared some great moments with our new baby daughter and then son, as my big 'tough' Glaswegian brother melted into the best uncle 'Pop' ever, always offering to babysit for me if I needed a haircut or to do some shopping in Aberdeen. He absolutely adored all our kids, sadly by the time he met his life partner they didn't manage to have kids of their own. Funny stories included him having to buy his niece, Lindsay, a book in Waterstones which she had grabbed as he had pushed her around in her pram as he was in buying books for his course. The book was a children's book but quite advanced for a one year old, his answer was to shrug his shoulders and say well he thought she may cry if he took it away from her! The big softie, I'm sure he would be very proud to know how the book loving baby now has a degree in English Literature and is now studying for an MLitt, with a view to then completing a PhD and becoming an academic. Probably all down to that book, eh Stephen?
As I get older, I now realise that our dysfunctional childhood, growing up very much bonded together in a home with parents who we weren't related to and actually gave me one of the most amazing loving relationships of my life. Stephen didn't care about what others thought about us, he only cared about whether we were happy or not. And whilst I busily tried to fit in and keep people happy (effectively stifling and drowning out my own thoughts and needs) he did the opposite, he listened to what was said and then let it go in one ear and straight out the other. I will always admire how he did that, I do try now, especially as I am struggle trying to 'deal' with our father, the only one of our family I'm left with now, as our lovely Mum died 6 months after Stephen. In a strange twist of fate Mum died on Stephen's birthday, I always felt it was a way of them telling me that they were together. There was another sad side to that story but I'm not actually strong enough to tell that today, perhaps one day.
Stephen, I miss you every day, but am left with memories of big laughs, being drunk together and feeling that it was you and me against the world sometimes. I wish I hadn't been quite such a bitch of an older sister, I wish I had told you how amazing you were every day, I wish I had managed to share part of your next life adventure in Portugal with you before you died, and not to have only visited after your death.
After graduating Stephen moved to London, to work and start life there, which included motorbikes and trips from the Ace cafe down to Brighton on your Triumph Bonneville. I am so glad you met Trish, the love of your life and that she brought you such happiness and joy, for the last years of your life. I love that you played the guitar, rode motorbikes, loved dogs and cats (even though you were allergic) travelled and got your beautiful tattoos (apart from that first one which was supposed to be a shark but you said looked like a tuna!). I love that you really loved your friends, and in turn they all loved you back, I know from the ones that I know that they miss you as much as I do.
My last story for this post Stephen, was what you did for me when in 1991, I had finally found to guts to leave my lonely, loveless first marriage. I had told my ex that I was leaving him, and then had to go round to our parents house to tell them. When I got to the house they already knew (thanks to my ex who had phoned them!), and when you got back from work that day I was standing in tears in the kitchen whilst Mum stood and cried and Dad shouted at me. You walked in the door, shouted at the lot of us and asked what the fuck was going on? I turned round and said I'm leaving my marriage and Mum and Dad don't want me too and think I'm an idiot, and you said 'Are you ok? Has anyone died, is anyone dying?' and when I said I was ok, you said right get your coat we're leaving. You took me out the house and up to the pub where you proceeded to buy me gins until I had calmed down. You always said that night that nothing in life really mattered apart from being happy and if I wasn't then I needed to sort it out and that you loved me and would help anyway you could. And you did, and always did.
On July 14th 2009, Stephen died. He died in one of the end of life ward at the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital Sutton, Surrey less than a year after his diagnosis with advanced oesophageal cancer. He had originally been misdiagnosed with acid reflux, by the time he couldn't swallow and was properly diagnosed the prognosis was terminal, Stephen didn't actually tell any of us he was terminal was until about a month before he died. He was only 41 when he died, the staff at the Royal Marsden were wonderful and when the time for him to pass came, he was given breakthrough pain relief and died listening to himself playing his own guitar composition via his headphones. Those he left behind were devastated and heartbroken.
Eight years since you have gone, it is so hard to think that I have to spend the rest of my life without you, so I hope that you don't mind me talking to you, asking your advice and trying to think 'what would Stephen do' because I hope that you are always still here for me, as I will always be for you.
Thank you for being part of my life Stephen, I am a better person because I was your sister, I am so proud that I still am.
Love you Stephen x
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