Big Brother Bill

BILL

My brother Bill was 7 years older than me.  He was named William Davie after his grandfather.  He was short in stature like him.  Because of the gap in our ages I have little recall of us doing things together.  I do remember riding behind him on his pony named Mickey.  I also remember his giving me rides on his motor scooter to the sand pit where we went swimming.  I vaguely recall his driving a go-kart that my dad had built using an old washing machine motor for propulsion.  He found school somewhat difficult and I remember feeling a bit jealous when he received money rewards for better than C grades when I didn’t.  I remember that his classmates were much bigger than he was and that they participated in sports at school while he didn’t. 

I was nine years old when he died in an automobile accident.  He had gone on a trip with a friend and fell asleep while taking his turn driving.  I remember the grief my parents experienced and how my mother for the rest of her life focused upon her suffering over his loss.  As I recall it she then compared me too frequently to him, describing him as having been more openly affectionate toward her, having more friends, being more willing to follow her directions, etc. So strangely, the sibling rivalry that I was not aware had existed in early childhood first showed itself after Bill died.   I remember having a vivid, repetitive dream in which he would come back to life and we would meet on the school playground across the street from our house.  He would reassure me that we were equals in terms of being good kids and that the ways he felt about mom weren’t much different than mine.  

Bill’s death occurred during the same year as the deaths of my “Aunt Mame”(my second cousin) and Grandmother White.  My main consolation came from a phrase repeated by my mother that “death comes in threes.”  I still felt insecure.  This was a time in my life when I was quite religious.  I somehow had gotten over the disappointment I had experienced at age 7 when I failed to memorize the 23rd Psalm and therefore had to watch the others in my Sunday School Class get a special pin awarded in church.  This disappointment was aggravated a year later when I learned the Psalm but received a bible as reward when what I had wanted was the pin.  At any rate this was a time in my life when I said a prayer before bed.  I would compulsively ask God to protect every member of our immediate as well as our extended family with the thought that if I were to leave anybody out something bad would happen to them and I would be the one to blame.  At this time I also developed a counting compulsion, the magic of it involving multiples of fours.  This along with the compulsive praying dissipated over the next several months without my ever telling anybody about it.  This childhood reaction did help me later to empathize with the angst experienced by my patients with obsessive compulsive disorders.