My Brother Bill
This is the sad true story about my brother Bill
who was four years older than me.
He was born and then tossed aside by his mother
who left him to his father’s parents to raise,
then promptly disappeared out of his life forever.
My grandparents brought him up
hoping his father would take care of him
when he returned from the war.
His father also my dad returned from the war
married with another son and didn’t want to know.
They gave him a nickname in private
so no one else would know.
In private, they always called him Dopey.
My sister and I were told
our grandparents had adopted him
and he was nothing to do with us.
When my dad’s parents died in 1958 and 59
plans were made to come back to England
where my mother’s parents were still alive
and leave Bill far behind.
Then as his mother had done eighteen years before
his father abandoned him as well.
For a while, he had to live on the streets
taking handout from where ever he could.
He was arrested for vagrancy and sent to jail.
Getting out he got himself a job and began to build a life.
He got married and started a family,
until one night he came home
and found his wife in bed with another man,
and a divorce followed and he was alone again.
Then after 25 years, his job vanished
and he had to find another.
One day in 2000, he got a telephone call
and did not know whether to believe it or not.
It was a call he never thought he would ever get,
a call from his younger brother - me.
As we talked on the phone, some truths came to pass
his brother and his sister did not know about him.
They were told he had been adopted
and were nothing to do with them.
However, I had found the truth,
which incensed my mother enough to disown me.
We met one another for the first time
after forty-two years in 2001 and again in 2002.
In 2003, this sad story ends,
in the March of that year
Bill succumbed to a heart attack.
His final words were a testament to his life.
No one loved me enough to care.
The sad truth is someone did
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poem by David Harris
Added by Poetry Lover
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