Remembering Doug

Who was Doug Barfield? Well, he was my nephew, my older brother's second child. My brother's namesake and my father's namesake. Doug was born in 1970 and died in 1977. As you can see, he had a terribly short life, but perhaps a fun and diverse one. He was a very white-skinned child, I remember, with sort of light-brown hair. Now, embarrassed, I think, Were his eyes green(like most of our family's eyes)or blue?
I always said he was a little Pickering because of his maternal grandmother,who, at this writing, died recently. She had been a Pickering and, to me, Doug looked a lot like her. He was a very playful kid and about 4 years younger than his sister. I can still see the two of them together in my mind. Their mother had been a high school beauty queen, so, it wasn't all that difficult for them to be nice-looking kids and they were, of course. My niece, Doug's sister, is approaching 40 now and has not lost any of her beauty. This would be Doug's 36th year. It seems he had an April birthday. Others in the family knew him better than I because I never lived near him. My memories are based on holiday get-togethers, etc.
Crying. I can see them crying, too. Doug and his sister. I remember thinking at the time that they were such crybabies! Why did they cry? I guess it was for one thing or another: candy, no candy; ice cream; because it was time to go; because it wasn't time to go; the dentist, etc. If you know kids, I'm sure you need no more reasons.
They certainly never lacked for food, clothing or shelter as their father, my brother, was hard-working. Since I had no kids of my own at that time, I probably thought they cried more than other kids cried. In his seventh year, Doug was the victim of a fatal and freak accident involving fire. I won't go into details. Due to my own lack of wisdom and experience at the time, I'd thought maybe the accident could have been prevented. (Accidents involving kids CAN be prevented if you keep them tied to the bedposts 24 hours a day!) Today, I know better. Today I know that sometimes no matter how hard we try to have perfect lives, perfect families, perfect homes, etc., we are not going to achieve any significant degree of perfection in our short lives on this earth. So, getting back to my nephew Doug, I'd like to say that I felt compelled to write this small piece about him and would like to invite other family members to send me their pieces about him so that I can paste them here. Our memorial to Doug, we can call it. On-line memorial.