Remembering with Bill

Bill as Author

It's not like I don't think about my brother any other time of year. But anniversaries have a way of stirring up memories. And tomorrow is the second anniversary of Bill's death.

Most difficult are the memories of the weeks before he died, the days before he died, when we talked by phone and he could hardly breathe enough to talk. I know he died with a peaceful heart, which is some comfort to those left behind. He'd done his wrestling with demons and emerged healed.

Two years on I am still "talking" to him. You can be reassured I do not hear him replying to me. But there are just some times when he is the person I want to share something with. And usually it is something funny or would be funny if he were there to make a wry observation, a witty aside.

The Comp Lit major at Wisconsin. Dylanesque.

Invariably his humor was peppered with details dredged from a prodigious memory of the people and places of our growing up. At age 7 or so, fresh from a bountiful Christmas that involved a lot of model train equipment (I remember giving him a tunnel), he invited his pal Joey over to play with the trains. Inevitably, the boys set up train crashes and the new engine left the track and landed on the tiled basement floor, never to run again. At precisely that moment, Joey said "I think I hear my mother calling me," and fled out the side door. Ever after when something would go awry he would quote Joey and we would all laugh.

He had an eye for style and detail unusual in a boy who would rather be playing baseball than practicing his piano lesson (ironically, with perfect pitch despite deafness in one ear from the mumps). A lady we then thought of as old always wore one of those plastic rain bonnets over her hair, which no doubt had been tightly permed at Doris's House of Beauty two blocks down Second Street. Whenever Bill saw our own mom with something similar, he would call her "Mrs. Vick."

He had names for everyone--not always flattering. Joey's big sister was "Fatso Fogarty." There was Eddie-Suck-on-a-Beer, the father of a cute girl he had a crush on. And Mr. Wizard, the slightly squirrely father of my own high school boyfriend. He was always on the lookout for Fenton Hardy, father of the famous Hardy Boys who inspired his daily adventures with our cousin Tommy. There was "King of the Safetys," the teacher who was in charge of the boys who acted as street crossing safety guards (girls could only be hall monitors in those days).

The Reinka Kids at 2, 5, & 8.

As the third child and only boy in the family, Bill took a lot of heat. He always felt he had too many mothers telling him what to do. And he was right. But he gave as good as he got too. Like the time he took bribes from my boyfriend (we are talking 50 cents here) to get lost, or told my date for the Homecoming Dance that his tie tack was in the wrong place, to my eternal mortification.

On the Oregon Coast with Trixie

Bill's life was such a gift to me. I am filled with gratitude and smiling at the memories. Peace, Bill, wherever you are.