Unbearable loss of Brian the Lion
SO how was your Christmas? Good, good. Mine? Oh, tinged with tragedy… thanks for asking.
At the start of the school holidays, I took my five-year-old son to London’s West End to see a show. Accompanying us on this day out was – as always – Brian The Lion, the beloved toy he’s had since he was a baby.
The show was excellent, and on the busy Tube home we read the programme together, chatted about Santa, looked forward to all the excitement ahead.
Later, at bedtime, Albie asked where Brian was, as he sleeps with him every night.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I felt sick. I just knew. Brian The Lion was lost.
Albie burst into tears, devastated and bereft.
“So I’ll never see Brian ever, ever again?” he asked, through heart-breaking sobs. I didn’t know how to answer.
Ages ago, a friend of mine told me that she knew it sounded weird, but her daughter’s Charlie The Monkey had genuinely become a member of their family.
I remember smiling politely like it was sweet while inwardly assuming she’d lost her mind, and trying to work out how soon I could leave.
Now, a few years later, and I know it sounds weird but Brian The Lion has genuinely become a member of my family.
My son took his first steps towards him. Brian went with him when he started school. I’ve put leave-in conditioner in his mane to try to make it less matted, and performed emergency superglue surgery when his eye fell out in the tumble drier.
The idea of Brian out in the world, all alone, at Christmas, was just too much.
My son’s been given many lovely, soft, aesthetically pleasing stuffed animals since birth, but Brian The Lion, a scruffy old thing his great uncle got from a charity shop, has always been his favourite.
If any other toy had gone missing, Amazon could have delivered a new one. Brian is irreplaceable. Gulp. I rang the theatre.
He wasn’t there. Transport For London Lost Property was closed for the weekend. All avenues were closed.
And yet... I couldn’t rest.
When I told my husband I was going to get the Tube back to Piccadilly Circus, at 9pm on the Friday night before Christmas, to retrace our steps, he looked at me like I was mental. I couldn’t argue really.
I knew I was unlikely to find Brian, but I’ve seen too many movies and couldn’t shake the feeling we were about to experience a magical festive miracle. Back in town, as I weaved my way through drunk people, I literally had to stop myself shouting, “Brian! Brian!” as I searched for him. I went back to the theatre, scoured the streets, talked to people at the station. Nothing.
I got home at the same time as my next door neighbour, and as we both put our keys in, I told her I’d gone crazy, and explained my failed mission.
I expected her to laugh at me, instead she got misty-eyed, remembering when her now 17-year-old son had lost Ellie The Elephant, and she and her husband had put posters up all over the neighbourhood.
Maybe I wasn’t insane after all, I was just a parent.
I’ve filed a (possibly overly lengthy) report on the Transport For London website.
They’re impossible to get through to on the phone, and I say that as someone who spent almost an entire day on hold.
The office is no longer open to the public, and I say that as someone whose husband discovered that by going there.
There is no more we can do, and yet we can’t quite give up.
We may have lost Brian, but we will never lose hope.
‘So I’ll never ever see Brian ever again?’ Albie asked through sobs