In the Middle of It - Marigrace Bannon

In the middle of it you don’t know, because you can’t know. That your father is dead @45 and you wonder what your remaining teenage years will be like with no daddy. Your introduction to Shakespeare and Frank Sinatra, but in the middle of it there are wrenching tears and an emptiness in your belly that feels unlike any hunger you have ever known. In the middle of that phone call 2 years later…. The college dorm. The hallway. The black phone attached to the wall that rings for those Southern bells, calls from Mother and daddy. You have no Daddy anymore except a raw memory and it’s your Mother. “Your sister Elizabeth has passed over.” Why can’t she just say dead? You know what that means. Passed over sounds like there’s still hope for that 5 year leukemia Ferris wheel, swaying in the middle, stopping for a minute at the top, going around and around and then stopping at the bottom, someone opens the door and you have to get out of that ride. It’s over. It went so fast you say. I was only scared a little, but I liked swaying in the breeze, I saw so much.