Hemal Patel

Born 23/1/1978

This is not the speech I hoped to make.

And certainly not one so rooted in the past tense.

For much of our adult life, my brother has been … just beyond reach.

Now the line has been cut, mid-conversation, just as we had begun to find a common understanding. In preparation for today I have felt like an archivist, desperately trying reclaim a shared history. Although this has been a harrowing process in many ways – a tussle in the mind between trying to remember and wanting to forget – it is comforting to know that, time and again, I have found a happy guy with a huge smile. Someone bringing joy to those around him and really savouring the best with them.

And even though he had no real affinity for Crawley or the south of England, perhaps it is fitting that his last stop – and where we say farewell – is where it all begin on 23rd January 1978. His place of birth.

Our relationship has been complex, chaptered, occasionally fractured, as is often the case with siblings. But ever-evolving.

Mum and dad would proudly state how they treat both brothers the same, without favouritism or distinction, as if they hoped this would make us inseparable for life. But parents have little control over a child’s path and each must ultimately choose their own.

That is how I remember our early days in Burgess Hill and Brighton – two boys jostling for independence and frequently butting heads. Occasionally there would be witnesses. When we visited the homes of mum’s brothers Hemant and Rohit, for instance. We would often come to blows – cousins including Neha Ben and Krishna maintain that we were as bad as each other. I may be biased but here’s my version: Hemal liked to throw his ample weight around and I had to … defend myself.

Our childhood was one of graft – humble and characterised by abstinence before indulgence and perhaps here is where Hemal’s dogged ambition and single-mindedness took root. We would both be working in the shops from a very young age, living above one of them for at least 10 years on Montpelier Place in Brighton. No family holidays and a strict focus on studies, which instilled a lifelong discipline in us both.

He was a year and a half older so, often begrudgingly, he would be the first to take on responsibility and set an example for his younger brother.

The paper round…

Assisting on the cash & carry trip…

Running one of the shops or making orders when either mum or dad were at an appointment…

Later he was handed the keys to dad’s Volvo to run errands and make pick-ups.

I can remember us trying to avert boredom by playing the odd game of tennis in the park, cricket in the back garden – with lots of bodyline bowling as tensions flared.

Or inventing our own games above the shop. Our hybrid of cricket and golf immediately comes to mind. As does the imaginary slalom down the stairs in our sleeping bags.

With precious few trips away and the onset of boredom during school holidays, the flat became our playground … and we trashed it. Windows were broken, ornaments cracked, the drinks cabinet was opened and cocktails mixed. But boys will be boys, as they say.

As the youngest, I could often wrap mum around my finger but there was no discrimination when it came to punishment. We would both feel the full force of the rolling pin or the belt if we stepped out of line, which was often.

Food, film and TV were simple pleasures. Mum was an exceptional cook as many of you know, and Hemal had an exceptional talent for cultivating a gut. I can still see him plowing through a few plates of dahl, badth, shaak and whatever slab of breaded meat accompanied them on that particular night. Always placing his cutlery down on his plate just a little quicker than I … then reaching for a little bit more, squeezing me further into the corner of the table as his frame expanded.

It was impossible not to sneak up behind mum, nuzzle and hug her after each daily feast and Hemal would quickly follow suit – mum almost yanking off his earlobes. He soon adopted the nicknames I gave her and there would be some lovely banter between us. Lots of arguments too, with mum the reluctant go-between. Hemal loved to tease and poke fun, and although he tempered this habit in later years, it was always in his nature.

Later after meals at the house on Wayland Ave, he would have his siesta sprawled out in front of the fire, the aforementioned gut hanging over his shorts, patting and caressing it as if to admire his work. Then came the snoring, a rumbling gurgling exhalation, it was.

Aside from 90’s phenomenon Friends and movies, there would be frequent disagreements about what to watch on TV or the mocking would commence for whatever reason. Mum would be the one I ran to in tears after Hemal had become physical. Occasionally the tables would be turned but rarely…

There was the time I came back from school and climbed the stairs to the lounge. Hemal thought it would be fun to impersonate a psychopathic cowboy by attaching a razor blade to a length of string and swinging it around like a lasso. I walked up… and he left his mark.

But amid all the scraps, there were early moments of union between us. Like the day he gave me another gift – this scar [eyebrow] – after pushing me off the bed. The next day I walked into school and the teachers asked what had happened. Rather than grass him up, I decided to invent an elaborate story where I had been attacked after getting off the bus from school … and Hemal had chased off the assailant.

Panic ensued…

The police were called, a false statement made and then Mrs Martin finally sensed the deception and I owned up.

Why do it? To protect my brother.

Another day, mum sent us to the supermarket to fetch meatloaf. We walked along Montpelier Rd, approached the crossroads and began to advance as we saw the green man. Suddenly a car took a hard left into our path and hit Hemal’s leg. Now eyewitness reports differ on what happened that day. Some say I managed to avert injury due to my superior agility. Others claim that Hemal pushed me out of harm’s way.

One thing is for sure. Mum never ate meat again.

Our escapism would be watching videos from the cash & carry, anything from children’s blockbusters such as The Goonies to obscure action films and ninja B-movies (the latter providing inspiration for our next special move on one another).

Cinema would always be accompanied by a picnic of biscuits, sandwiches, a pork pie for Hemal, and other bits from the shop, all sprawled out on the carpet.

After those late night restocks or shopping trips on Friday nights we both used to love going to Uncle Sam’s Burger Shop and the whole family would sit in the car on one of the side streets and have a different kind of picnic. Meal time was precious together time, whatever the location.

From an early age, Hemal would benchmark himself against his friends. We were hardly the kids with the latest toys and trainers and this irked him more than I. And I think that drove him to the point where he vowed to be able to afford whatever he wanted, even if mum or dad thought it was “a waste of money”. He wanted to live by his own standards, to determine the value of the things he bought. And he was willing to work hard for them as he grew. Extremely hard.

Clearly, we were two different characters but there were many parallels in our formative years. We both went to St Christopher’s prep school in Hove – Patels V and VI becoming captains of their respective houses. We both won assisted places to Hurstpierpoint College – effectively a top-notch education at a snip of the cost for five years. (Both heathens becoming prefects of chapel and bearing the cross at the weekly Eucharist.)

And of course, both prop forwards from 5 till forever. As you can probably tell, he filled the shirt and scrum a little better than I. But that love of rugby became our greatest shared passion. I can hear him now berating the ref in the stadium and see him jumping online to troll a few fans.

Anyway, there was an unfussy co-existence to our time in these schools. Hemal would neither goad nor shepherd me. He would do his thing and I mine. But his influence could be felt even before my arrival. The year before I joined, when my prep school played Hurst junior school at rugby, whispers were going around that giant Hemal’s almost as gigantic brother was on the team sheet. Classic Chinese whispers. The players were quivering in their boots …

And many of the teachers would identify me as Hemal’s brother. He was popular, able to bridge most social groups, and applied himself in many areas, not least in the sciences.

Jon Underwood was one of Hemal’s closest friends at Hurst and in all the same sets for Biology, Chemistry and Physics. He remembers a positive, relaxed and reassuring guy, although one prone to exaggeration, which only added to Hemal’s appeal. One lovely story he told me is about the summer before they both went to university. Jon had a big argument with his dad and decided to not come home after his shift at the garden centre. He spent the night on Ditchling Common in his Peugeot 205. The next morning, he decided to visit Hemal and keep his parents hanging on just a little bit longer.

He walked into the shop and Hemal was clearly on the phone to someone about Jon. He grinned, pointed but didn’t give the game away. He denied knowing Jon’s whereabouts, but when the call finished, told him in no uncertain terms that Jon needed to hotfoot it back home as his parents were worried sick. Now a parent himself, Jon says he’s glad Hemal showed his sensible side on that day.

Even at that age, Jon tells me that Hemal was among the better groomed and most well-dressed people in their year. He always had the latest Oakley sunglasses, for example. That I also remember. In fact, a bit of style advice from Hemal in Salcombe in the summer of ’99, indirectly resulted in Jon getting the girl he had been after for several months. That girl is now his wife.

For as long as I can remember, Hemal wanted to be a doctor. Dad maintains that even as a child he wanted to help and heal others. He would see mumma or mum becoming ill and ask, how can I make them better? It was his vocation. And it came from somewhere deep within.

One of the great challenges in life is to find your place in the world, and that works on a personal as well as a professional level. For many of us, the two are intertwined. How can I make the greatest positive impact doing what I most love?

I always admired Hemal in that sense because he knew who he was and what he could become. And that self-assurance was a hallmark of his personality. When the time came to see a careers guidance person at Hurst, Hemal was an easy appointment.

But there were a few hurdles to overcome on the way to medical school. Hemal missed out on the required grades first time round and, rather than let the clearing system dictate his fate, he chose to retake some A-levels at tutorial college in London. Back then, retakes were a black mark against your name. He improved those grades but still no viable options…

Hemal became despondent and thought of giving up. Then Dundee opened its arms – with a little gentle persuasion from mum on the phone – and in 1998 he set off to start university on the other side of the UK.

He threw himself into life in Scotland, traversing the country from Dundee to Fort William, often wearing his signature bodywarmer on top of countless superfluous layers, a beanie too perhaps, and returning with nothing but great things to say about the people up north. The thought of Hemal wearing a kilt was equal parts hilarious and horrifying to mum. “Ai hai hai” she would gasp. But he took every opportunity to slip one on.

The uni era is quite hazy in my mind. And others are probably better placed to speak about those years. So I did some digging. “Hamish” Patel’s friends remember him as gentle and loyal, someone who always took an interest in others’ wellbeing. He was fun to go out with, loved raving the night away in clubs such as Fat Sams, Mardis and Enigmas. Red Bull and Rachmaninoff vodka, in hand.

Come hangover Sunday, he would do the McDonald’s run, probably washing his down with pints of Coke, just like the old days at Montpelier Stores.

You could always rely on him to be well turned out, some might even say handsome, and never short of a daft joke. A bit of a prankster too, as it goes. He instigated the Battle of the Flats against Jo, Kath and Amy, where they would try to steal each other’s clothes while the chosen victim was on holiday.

We all missed him at home, particularly mum. Aside from occasional family gatherings in and around London, the four of us were a tight unit by the seaside. Mum would dig for gossip and threatened to source a wife for Hemal. There were a few whispers of girlfriends, the odd picture, but Hemal’s eyes widened just that little bit more when he mentioned Sarah. No confirmed sightings south of the border though … until Chai Mama’s wedding to Auntie Katharine in 2006.

Apparently, JHO Hemal had taken a liking to his SHO. Sarah was in the geeky group – in other words, younger and smarter than him – while Hemal liked to hang around with a cooler crowd.

Was she girlfriend material? Only one way to find out. Invite Sarah to dinner at St Andrews Doll’s House and ask her to pay. Sarah passed the test. Or perhaps the test was his.

Hemal would return south during the holidays – always ready to debate the cost of living with dad, in a cunning ploy to boost his allowance. He could be very persuasive when he needed to me, and inventive – plucking figures out of thin air.

Not living under the same roof certainly benefitted our relationship. And for me, it was always a joy to take him out for a rare pint with friends and feel that natural togetherness that I craved as we entered adulthood.

As Hemal and Sarah grew ever closer, our only insight into their relationship would be through his calls on the phone. One minute she would be his “Sweets” and “Smalls”, the next his “Ball & Chain”. Or “Special Needs”: I was on the receiving end of that one in birthday cards.

Oh how he loved a card and took things way too far one year by signing off as “your older, wiser and arguably better-looking brother”. Hmm.

Anyway, I would be sitting there in the lounge or kitchen as he was on the phone and think … this is incredible chat. Odd but incredible. Hats off to Sarah for putting up with that; I’m sure she gave as good as she got. On a serious note though, I did admire them as a couple – two best friends and life partners standing side by side into double figures. And that is something to aspire to.

As Hemal made the transition into paid employment, we saw him less and less. I returned home after university and stayed with mum and dad till I was 27, but his days in Brighton were long gone. Our parents were proud that we were both making our own way towards a career. It was their reward for a lifetime of toil particularly in the shops – but there was a vacuum in their lives. I’m so glad that they were both able to see Hemal graduate, as I had skipped mine a few years earlier. The three of us went up on the train especially for the occasion. That was as close as we got to a family holiday.

When mum became ill in 2010 and passed the following year after a 10-month battle in hospital, she left a void that was impossible to fill. If you’ve been in her arms, tasted her food, heard her laugh, felt her caress, you will understand.

Hemal was a calm and reassuring presence at the beginning and end of that period. But he was otherwise remote. You could say that he went into work mode as a coping mechanism – less forthcoming about his pain than I.

He pushed himself even harder in the aftermath. Perhaps it was guilt at not spending enough time with her. With the shop closed and now increasingly housebound, mum had more time to miss her children. But she understood, and I think we all did, that Hemal was just trying to do the best he could in a tough profession – first to enjoy the spoils with her, and then, after her death, to find some measure of contentment and a new settled family life in Scotland.

I must thank the wonderful Bhavna Masi who provided comfort, support and a decent measure of tough love for him at that point. They had a great rapport. When the time came to find an engagement ring, there was only one lady for the job. And she delivered. As always.

And let’s not forget Sarah’s family, with whom Hemal shared many adventures, from comical holidays where he would blag his way to deals with zero linguistic ability, to exquisite dinners in restaurants – Hemal presiding over “feeding time at the zoo”, as he called it. There’s Morris, the pudding muncher, whose legend precedes him. Betty, “the machine” who can also put it away I assume, and James (aka Jimmy Golden Boy) who had the pleasure of being his lodger in Dundee for several years.

Hemal was as good as a Goodbrand. And I’m sure that being around you all, particularly during this period, helped him to find contentment in his heart. Although we have been thrown together by tragedy, Dad and I hope to spend more time with you all and make happier memories.

Hemal was protective and vowed to mum that he would look after me. And the loss did bring us closer together. From then on, when I saw Hemal he would hug and kiss me with a tenderness I had seldom felt from my brother. It was as if, with each embrace, he was trying to make up for lost time and to reclaim the comfort of family … that shared history.

We stopped looking at the things that separated us from one another and we began to nurture what we had in common. And that created a bridge.

Hemal would make rare forays from Scotland to see dad and I, while we tried to get back on our feet in Brighton. We’d sit around that same table in Wayland Ave, only this time I had a little more elbow room. Hemal would share his plans while dad asked a flurry of questions about his health, as if Hemal was his personal physician.

But this doctor was off duty and his visits felt like reluctant detours. Here was a guy with eyes firmly fixed on the future, determined … focused … forthright. Of course, these are great qualities but there are winners and losers along the way. As you stride ahead, it's easy to forget the ones you are leaving behind.

It’s a trait I noticed in Hemal from a young age – a form of extreme compartmentalisation – Sarah says he loved the phrase “park it”. Hemal wasn’t the possessive or needy kind, comfortably shedding skin and discarding friendships throughout his life. However, when it comes to family that does make it more difficult for you to reconcile with the past. 

Without mum, Hemal’s absence was felt more deeply and dad would repeatedly ask me for updates. Often there would be none and I would wait and wait for that reply to a text, call, email… This gave the impression that Hemal had no time for his old man, that he didn’t care perhaps, but I think that would be unfair. Looking back now, I know he wasn’t doing the best he could. He was doing the best he thought he could under constant pressure.

Hemal was thankful to dad for being a great provider and offering good counsel on finance matters and more. Whether he would admit it or not, Hemal took after his father in how he was so meticulous in every facet of his life – from hair to belongings, lists to spreadsheets. Perhaps we both did. But Hemal took it to another level with stacks of phone notes and files. Always plotting…

It’s a running joke that he would move as far as he could to be away from his family. And so, from Brighton to Dundee and then on to Sydney with Sarah – now his fiancée and about to embark on a prestigious fellowship herself.

For him, this was a chance to live the dream and experience a faraway continent working fewer hours in nicer weather for better pay. Although it didn’t quite work out that way. Still, they were well placed to experience the beauty of nature, and he would beam about snorkelling the Barrier Reef and exploring Daintree National Park in northern Queensland among other places.

For years I had been the one travelling the world. Now it was his turn and I encouraged his wanderlust. But I did feel anxious about him being so far away, as did Dad, of course.

Meanwhile, the legend of Dr Patel just grew and grew. All we would hear about back home were the double shifts and grueling out-of-hours work Hemal was taking on. Less about the impact he was having on patients and his influence on colleagues. He won over people wherever he went. Over the past few weeks, I have read some amazing tributes coming from faraway places such as Austinmer in Woolongong, New South Wales, all the way back to Dundee.

They paint a picture of a kind and considerate person, an exceptional doctor, someone who would go above the call of duty time and again. A real tower of knowledge, a rock with a beaming smile.

Patients would ask about him more than a year after he had left their practice. One parent wrote this about Hemal: “He was our friend and absolutely adored Luke [her little boy]. He held our hands through some of the toughest moments in our life and celebrated our wins.”

Hemal’s contact with us withered even further, or maybe that’s how it appeared because we missed him more and more. I did find a random email from February 2013 written at 5.15am during a night shift. Picture the scene: he’s got his yearly review in March, he’s unable to take annual leave for a brothers’ trip due to short staffing, he’s moving house in April… And that busy-ness was a constant throughout his professional career.

But Hemal could always make time for one thing … and proceeds to brag about his squad selection powers before giving me his starting line-up for the British Lions’ first test against Australia. At 5.15am. 

Hemal was a really generous guy and one for big gestures. So he managed to just about redeem himself by inviting me to visit him and Sarah in Oz. He took to the task of host with real gusto, planning a series of treats, including a trip to Sydney Opera House to see Bangarra dance group, a hike up the harbour bridge and lots of lovely meals in restaurants such as Café Sydney. Some of my happiest memories were far more humble though – like having another picnic in front of the TV, just like old times.

For Hemal and Sarah the majority of 2016 was spent apart. He had to fulfil his practice contract in Australia while Sarah returned to Scotland to finish her surgical training.

For two people so content to be solely in each other’s company and being there for one another, it must have been a very difficult period. But they handled it like devoted partners and top professionals. Hemal had really fallen for life in Australia and things were beginning to open up for him there.

But there was never any question of him not being reunited with his “Little Pomplemoose”. Not even the prospect of three months re-training in Scotland, followed by a period of supervised practice.

Their itinerant, work-determined life continued with stints in Edinburgh and Oxford. I visited them for the England v Scotland Six Nations in Edinburgh and then Hemal and I settled in for an early morning Lions test with Guinness in Oxford followed by evening episodes of Love Island. He had an unhealthy obsession with that show and some guy called Kem?

There were precious few encounters after that. Hemal had set his sights on a dream home in Edinburgh and was working overtime to pay for it. He would barely have three or four hours of sleep a night on certain weeks. During one period, he would drive three hours a day commuting between Edinburgh and Dundee up to six times a week. He certainly believed in working hard, playing hard.

There were lots of trips to top-notch restaurants to indulge his love of fine wine and cuisine – he was a proper gourmand, a Monocle reader with discerning taste who carefully considered each purchase he made.

He and Sarah took breaks to places such as Amsterdam, Berlin and Tuscany.

He owned every gadget you could imagine, an enviable collection of high-end wristwatches and a boutique’s worth of grooming products (Hem was unofficially sponsored by Kiehl’s and Tom Ford).

But you couldn’t help but wonder, when is enough? How much further can he push himself and at what cost? One of his final lists read:

Material goals
Porsche Carrera 2s 991 and Rolex Daytona Black Ceramic

Who knows if this relentlessness was a factor on 22 February, but fate dealt him the cruelest hand that day. It was the eve of what might have been the most fulfilling year of his life.

The world has been robbed of a loving brother and son, a devoted fiancée, an amazing doctor and, as his long-time barber called him, “a genuinely good man”.

I will never forget hearing the news in a crowd of strangers at the V&A museum in London. The initial jolt gave way to this swell of disbelief, then cold despair. The room was spinning and I tried to fix my gaze somewhere. Anywhere. My eyes locked on to the sculptures surrounding me and I thought, how is it even possible for these … delicate things to be here hundreds of years later, yet my 41-year old brother can disappear in one night? That is our mortality and it’s so fragile.

I long to share time with Hemal, to jostle again as we once did… but as equals and without expectation or burden. When we cast off the roles we assign to others in our own lives, that’s when you get to the essence of one another. Who knew he was the kind of guy who read Coelho and Hemingway, listened to classical music or appreciated contemporary photography. These things are like portals and we should open them at every available opportunity.

There is no manual for grief. No five neat stages to pass through and emerge as you once were. There is one only before … and after, and an ever-widening chasm between the two. As you experience it, it feels like a hollowing, or as the writer Joan Didion, put it, “an un-ending absence.” Her words have helped me to navigate through the thick, dark fog once before and perhaps they will again.

Eight years ago, as I was struggling with mum’s passing, a friend suggested I read a book called The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s a stark self-examination and articulate expression of loss. In it, Didion reports from the frontline after her husband John dies suddenly of a heart attack at the dinner table.

An hour earlier they had been visiting their only daughter Quintana, who was hospitalised with pneumonia and eventually succumbed due to complications at the age of 39 – just a few months before the book was published.

Refracting her pain through literature, Didion wrote this: “We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

She continues: “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” 

In times of trouble many people turn to religion as balm for the soul. For all its complexity and potential for conflict, to have that faith is a wonderful and admirable virtue. It has brought humanity through some of the darkest tragedies in centuries past. 

Many of us here today have lost someone we love. Perhaps religion is your source of comfort and strength – and a form of healing. If you believe, whoever your god may be, I do respect that and I urge you to hold on to your faith.

Unfortunately, I can’t. Because my family is being taken away from me. 

There is this child inside me. And he says this: If a god existed then he would not let bad things happen to good people. He would not allow them to toil only to depart on the cusp.

That child has a point. All I can offer as a man is a different perspective on misfortune. Perhaps there are no happy endings. Only new beginnings.

What I believe in is the human spirit. The will to endure. And that is enough. It has to be.

There is no sense to be found in a sudden tragedy like this. The challenge for anyone who experiences loss is to not make it the defining, dispiriting moment of the rest of their life.

It is to fill that emptiness with a bloom of joy and optimism. And to do that, you have to allow yourself to be happy again. Perhaps not today. But soon.

And Sarah, I wish that for you in particular. With all my heart.

In years to come, people will ask: what was your brother like? Perhaps it will be my child wondering about that big guy in the picture. His uncle.

And I will answer, without hesitation – he was a true gent. A Care Bear of a guy who left everyone a little better than he found them.

For that, I am proud and grateful.

(09.03.19)