Now, fully 63 years after the trauma, I have been diagnosed with cPTSD, I'm now 68 and was 5 1/2 when this trauma occurred. What happened? I had returned from school, where I had only recently started, and my brother Paul, then 4 1/2, and I went out to play together. We lived on a houseboat, a converted MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) moored on the River Thames near Sunbury. This was the 11th June 1955 (a date I discovered from my deceased father's diaries).
On the small quay beside our home an upturned dinghy (rowing boat) had recently been painted with a waterproofing material and left to dry. My brother and I crawled under the dinghy, treating it as a hiding place perhaps? Upon crawling out from beneath the dinghy I may have caught my foot on it, causing it to crash down upon my brother's head, probably killing him instantly - I don't know? My only real memory is of a slowly growing pool of blood. I never saw my brother again, though I do vaguely recall spending many months looking for him.
Today, of course, any child experiencing such a trauma would have much help to recover. Teams of child therapists, social agencies etc. would bear down. In the 1955 UK, there was nothing. Children were seen as empty vessels, life went on. God knows what my mother and father must have gone through?
It was fully 25 later that I found myself first recognising my missing brother. I had, a months prior to this event, started working with a speech therapist in London, I had a bad speech impediment (stammer, stutter) which had plagued me since my childhood. I'd sought help with this with a professional speech therapist, Peggy Dalton. To Peggy, it became clear that I was dealing with rather more than a stutter, our therapy took a different turn.
Walking home from work one evening I was suddenly overcome, consumed by a terrible need to contact Paul, my brother. I became hysterical, quite alone in a wooded area near my home and screaming with frustration and, loss!
Once recovered, I returned home and decided that I MUST visit the place where the event had happened 25 years earlier. I wrote a note, the words of which I can't recall now, and then drove to Sunbury - not too far, across London.
Nothing much had changed there, in Sunbury. It all appeared 'much smaller' than I remembered. There were no lightening bolts, voices from the past; no, just a place...
I left my note and, rather disappointed I believe, drove home. Nothing had been resolved.
On the small quay beside our home an upturned dinghy (rowing boat) had recently been painted with a waterproofing material and left to dry. My brother and I crawled under the dinghy, treating it as a hiding place perhaps? Upon crawling out from beneath the dinghy I may have caught my foot on it, causing it to crash down upon my brother's head, probably killing him instantly - I don't know? My only real memory is of a slowly growing pool of blood. I never saw my brother again, though I do vaguely recall spending many months looking for him.
Today, of course, any child experiencing such a trauma would have much help to recover. Teams of child therapists, social agencies etc. would bear down. In the 1955 UK, there was nothing. Children were seen as empty vessels, life went on. God knows what my mother and father must have gone through?
It was fully 25 later that I found myself first recognising my missing brother. I had, a months prior to this event, started working with a speech therapist in London, I had a bad speech impediment (stammer, stutter) which had plagued me since my childhood. I'd sought help with this with a professional speech therapist, Peggy Dalton. To Peggy, it became clear that I was dealing with rather more than a stutter, our therapy took a different turn.
Walking home from work one evening I was suddenly overcome, consumed by a terrible need to contact Paul, my brother. I became hysterical, quite alone in a wooded area near my home and screaming with frustration and, loss!
Once recovered, I returned home and decided that I MUST visit the place where the event had happened 25 years earlier. I wrote a note, the words of which I can't recall now, and then drove to Sunbury - not too far, across London.
Nothing much had changed there, in Sunbury. It all appeared 'much smaller' than I remembered. There were no lightening bolts, voices from the past; no, just a place...
I left my note and, rather disappointed I believe, drove home. Nothing had been resolved.
