Thread by @chrischirp

THREAD: meet my brother

Unsurprisingly, being locked down over Xmas and New Year turns thoughts to family – and to my brother who died almost 14 years ago in a motorbike accident when he was 39.

First some context: Andreas was 8 years older than me – big difference when we were kids, but we were close as adults and instant messaged every day (yahoo messenger! remember that?!).

Last week I found some of the message chats we used to have that I collated for his funeral & they made me laugh out loud and miss him all over again. So I wanted to share some of my funny, quirky brother with the world – here goes…

He worked at Yahoo doing difficult coding. He loved coffee (with milk). He was also very funny.

He was a computer wizard – there was nothing he couldn’t code. I was and remain a rank amateur compared to him.

My brother was known to be of a literal turn of mind and there was a running joke that I was training him out of it. (PS they did go to California that summer – a trip my dad treasures now).

As a family we would meet often, especially at Christmas, and play games all day which we loved. In 2004 & 2005 my sister had my nieces which changed things a little for a while :-)

Neither me nor my brother were great with small kids but we managed 😊. 2007 was the last Christmas we had as a complete family. As it happens, my (now) teenage nieces are delightful, love games and he would have loved spending Christmas with them. And I got old but he didn’t.

I was also the one who tended to end up suggesting presents for him to buy for birthdays and Christmases…

As siblings, we parcelled out responsibilities

We both worked in central London in the years before he died and had lunch often. Arranging lunch meetings could sometimes be a trial...

In 2005, I’d recently returned from 3 yrs working in the US and Andreas had been on a hiking holiday with me in Montana. He fell in love with the US scenery then and went back as often as he could in the 2 years after that.

We talked about it often and were planning more hiking holidays together.

Weirdly enough, a few days before he died he had a very minor motorbike accident… eventually was admitted to hospital overnight for observation but he was fine and went home the next day.

Below is the last conversation I ever had with him – discussing where to go together that summer. He died that night, just after midnight, hit by a car which turned into his path.

We never did get to do that summer holiday. My (now) husband & I did eventually do both the Norway and the US trip Andreas and I discussed all those years ago. They were amazing. Even now, whenever we are somewhere beautiful, we think of him and wish he could be there to see it.

Well that’s it. I found these messages again and am glad I did. And now you all know a bit about my lovely brother too. END