Marek

I have lost my brother.

And he was the best there is.

We had so much fun together.

He was MY big brother.

I remember when still in Czechoslovakia, a five year old child playing outside with my friends. There was a group of us, and we were talking about our brothers. Each one of us shouting that theirs was the largest, strongest, biggest and best. 

Mine was!

Marek was eight years older than I. But at the same time as being my “big” brother, he loved to play, and boy did we play. We used to play with my collection of Matchbox cars, making a road all the way from the second floor of our house in Holland to the ground floor. No wonder the cars are all chipped! We used to play practical jokes on each other; it just wasn’t safe to put a spoon full of sugar into your tea, without tasting it first. 

He was also my teacher. Even at a very early age, when we were forced to leave our homeland, my parents asked him to teach me Czech grammar. I wasn’t too keen and it didn’t last long. But well into my adulthood, when I send him a letter or a post card, it would come back with corrections in red pen! But I never did mind, as the comments with the corrections would have me in fits of laugher. He also taught me about cooking, how to make various drinks, English bears, punting photography and a load of other things

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He was also my big brother, with all that entails. There for me when things went wrong. He plucked me out of the sea when a large wave was going to throw me onto some rocks. He was there to pick me up when I fell of my table and cracked my chin open. He was there when I broke my leg skiing, making me laugh all the way to the hospital. 

 He was also my intellectual stimulation. We never fought, but we did have heated discussions about all kinds of things, such as religion, politics, archaeology and science. The fists would bang the table because we wanted to put our point across. Passionate for what we both stood for or believed, each not wanting to give an inch. But it was all fun. And FUN was what he understood so well. 

And even though we did not see eye to eye on many worldly things we also loved many the same things. Apart from good food and wine, we both loved nature and history and he would take me on interesting walks. I loved archaeology and could indulge though him in this interest. He loved science and through me we would explore many possibilities. We loved to tease each other and others as well.

He was MY big brother, and a piece of me is gone with him. I am incomplete. We were three, my brother, my sister and I. That trinity is no more. The Ying and Yang of that relationship is broken. There is nothing that can replace that very empty space that his passing leaves within me. 

He lived life to the full; some have written to me that he lived more than any mere mortal could. He burned brightly, too brightly and burned out his life far too soon. The bright candle that was my brother has been extinguished, but he will live on in all of us. 

Goodbye Marek, I love you.