I read this at Brian's Celebration of life:

 

Today I wear this hat as a lighthearted tribute to Brian. For when he was about 19, Brian often was seen wearing a hat much the same as this but in white. Now Brian was never really one for fashion at any point in his life and so I teased him a lot over this hat. As this was a big statement at the time and I recall walking with Brian and our mother in Park Royal Shopping Center one afternoon and you could see me walking well ahead of them, as I didn’t want to be seen to what I thought was a terrible fashion violation.  I was all of 14!  Little did I know that well over 30 years later I would be wearing a similar hat!  

 

But other than on that one particular afternoon, there was never a time that I was ever embarrassed to be walking with my brother Brian. In fact as I will explain later, Brain and I were inseparable during some of the most precious memories of my childhood. There are no crazy stories that I can tell…for in many ways he was the same person in 2016 certainly in temperament and conduct as he was as a child. He kind of just knew how not to get in trouble I suppose or perhaps his imagination never lead him astray. Now my earlier life had all the typical ups and downs and trials of learning life the hard way…with some comedy thrown in but this was not Brians’ way.  Perhaps in this way Brian was, as they say, an old soul.

 

First let me explain that this is so daunting a task - trying to pay tribute to a person’s life. So I decided to call this tribute the “Unfinished Symphony of a Gentle Man”. It required some poetry to elevate these words out of the ordinary. And Brian was a Gentle Man. Kind, caring all with an understated intelligence. He knew what was right, what was important in life and how to treat people. Nowadays these are not the kind of attributes that receive headlines in today’s world and yet these attributes are highly regarded and perhaps, sadly for some, only noticed once that person is gone. At his best, Brian was good with the little details and in that I mean what a spiritual person would say things that only God would see.

 

Also this is daunting because one’s life is a symphony…life has so many layers:  Brian was the big brother, the little brother, the son to his parents, the husband to his wife and the father to his children and a co-worker and simply a good friend to others.  Plus he was the man to himself with all his own aspirations and dreams. He and I caught up on stories of our family history over the past 2 years after I heard of his cancer …

some of which we had not discussed for over 40 years. And this was mainly because life after 30 seems to move so incredibly fast. AS we stand now, time in the end is what is so special with those that we love. Time stood still when we were little and now I say as many before me: where does the time go?

 

So I would like to give you a brief picture of what Brian has meant to me over the years. To give you a brief view of his early days, I need to take you back to my earliest memories. For my part, I am his “little” brother and when I was little he took on the role of baby sitter quite naturally. Of course both my brothers Ian, Brian and I would play together but for the most part Brian was left with the task of caring for me, as Ian was the oldest and with that came privilege & freedom!

 

Please allow me to paint a picture of the era for the benefit of those of you not yet born: for what is now is history - was for us the backdrop of our lives: the nineteen sixties was our time: Ian introduced us to the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and so much more great music.  All of us watched in our living rooms the stark realities of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinations, or watched in wonder the Apollo Space Missions and as a family we woke up super early to watch the first man walk on the moon and of course endless hours of all the stupid TV that is still on today in reruns. And so it was for my earliest years we were inseparable. As Ian had done with Brian, Brain and I now shared the same hand me down clothes, the same bedroom…sometimes event he same bathwater! Brian introduced me to the fantasy world of make believe. Some of the happiest days of my childhood were spent hours upon hours playing make-believe war games with same toy soldiers as Ian had done with Brian many years before.  Whether it was playing an electric racing car set or card games, Brian would never tire of playing. Of course reality would eventually burst my bubble, plastic soldiers no longer came alive with my hands, Santa Clause it turned out was invented by Coca Cola and the sixties turned into the seventies!  At this point we lived in the middle class suburbs of Calgary and later we moved to Vancouver by the time I was 9 and Brian was 14. And so our playtime evolved into board games but ever consistent Brian was always there: Endless marathons matches of Monopoly or Risk…looking back I don’t know how but he never tired - he never showed boredom.  Brain was never too eager to go out after school, more to form he was always home, always there. In this Brian is a true family man. His gentle obedient behavior won quick favor with our mother. And in this I knew Brian would be a great father to his children because of the kindness, care and patience he had shown me and with the joy he had in these simple and yet highly underrated things in life.  We grew up in a musical family. Both our parents and both grandparents played musical instruments…some very well. Family lore has it that a great great grand mother was a concert pianist in England! It sounds too good to not mention and perhaps in time this legend will grow even more! Still every birthday or family celebration was marked with singing around the piano with our mother, father, Aunt Brenda or grandmother singing. Although none of us three brothers really became good a playing musical instruments ourselves -  we all developed a great love of music. In the seventies thankfully great music continued to be made and I recall Brian bringing home Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road, Peter Frampton’s Come Alive, Yes Yes-Songs, Queen’s Night of the Opera, David Bowie’s Young Americans, Pink Floyd’s Wish you Were Here and so on…and endless summer days Brain and I would listen to these albums again and again. Playtime turned into the lazy days of teenage summer. In 1977 along came the Rubik’s Cube, a popular, brainteaser to which Brian’s mathematical brain would be the first in the family to solve…perhaps foreshadowing his career in Computer Science. Still to this day I can’t solve this puzzle! Science was Brian’s thing. He read a lot as a teen…all of Issac Asimov’s stories and one of his favorite books was Dune. He was always reading back then…we all three did…..So in the late 1970’s, in his early twenties, Brian enrolled into BCIT to begin his studies in computer Science. Keep in mind computers where unknown entities back then. The power of your iphone used to fill an entire room.  It was not just a matter of plug and play. There were crazy math skills to master and very obscure computer languages to learn. People said it would be a growth industry is all. So at BCIT Brain really came into his own and it was here that he forged strong friendships and I know he was very fond of his friends during this time in his life and I could see he really found the direction that would lead him to the path that would eventually define his career. When the Internet was in its infancy, Brian said the Super Highway was a dirt road with no signs…and it was… It was the joyless commands of Microsoft that ruled the day. It was nothing like you see today.   

 

Now when Brian sought out a goal he would achieve it. He proudly commented that when he first laid eyes on Jan he had said to his friends at the time: “one day she is going to be my wife”.

Of course during this period, the long carefree days that Brian and I shared were now fading behind us. He simply shifted his focus to his new family. And he was never so proud as to when his children were born, never so proud to any of their accomplishments. His family became his life. And poetically again time would slow down but this time for his children…and they now have all so many memories of him during this precious time. Ian and Brian and I never really fought in all the years and any memory I have of just the three of us are some of the best of my life. I have so many pictures of those days still in my mind and they linger like a day-dream now. In the movie Citizen Kane, which some say is one of the greatest films of all time, the final ending is a picture of a Sled named Rosebud…a childhood sled that represents some of the happiest days in the main characters life. I have many such images, many happy days and fortunately these memories continue beyond my childhood and yet many of those early memories include Brian. As we know memories live on with those who are still alive. And although loosing Brian feels like loosing an arm or a leg he will always be in my heart.  

 

Now Brian was not a spiritual person. He was a man of science. So perhaps he is would be fine if I said that he has returned to stardust from which we all come from and so perhaps we can rejoin again in another universe. 

 

Tobin Boothe