The eleven year old mind that lives in head of the middle child, smack dab in the middle of adolescense, in a divorced family is an odd thing…or is it?
I felt like nobody really loved me. We had just moved to a new town and the neighbors were all boys. I was in the shy time of my life and blushed easily…don’t recall being able to talk to boys quite yet. Things were ugly between my parents, I miss my dad and the person my mom used to be before she had to worry constantly about a job and having her children ripped from her arms by a father and family matriarch.
I was wishing I was dead. The sky was cloudy as autumn absorbed the summer. I was sitting in the living room at a card table that I had adopted as my writing desk. My diary entry was finished and I sat doodling on a pad of paper. Little stick figures being run over by a train. In the way that adolescents do, I gave into the fantasy. My family would be told of my death and my family would reunite in their common grief for me. My death would be the catalyst of peace within the family as that is the purpose of the middle child…the peacemaker.
Each person in the family was living in their own little world, separate from one another. I was convinced that my little world was different from theirs because I knew things…things that were held in secrecy by adults…things children shouldn’t have to understand…things brought to me on the wings of thoughts and whispersed mystery.
My reality slammed into dimness as a dark cloud had passed in front of the sun. My mind knew that something significant had just occurred when my heart flipped over in my flatbreasted chest. I felt sudden guilt over my fantasy but I didn’t know why.
The phone rang and I talked to my friend, Lori for a few minutes. She was bored. I wished I could hang out with her. My mom’s boss and his wife knocked on the door and came in. As I left the room I heard my mother cry out “What do you mean Walter’s dead?” but my audio processor went haywired and that’s not what I heard in my brain.
Regardless, my mom’s boyfriend was dead. He died while fighting a fire. A bee stung him and his allergy kit was out of whatever medicine was used for serious allergic reactions. He had used the last shot on his dog that was bitten by a rattlesnake. Walter’s heart stopped.
The wife of mom’s boss insisted we kids go for a walk with her. She told us we had to be strong for our mother and do everything to help her. “Especially you,” she said, eyes in my direction. “Why me? I’m not the oldest,” I said quietly. “Because you’re the one that’s supposed to.”
That night I was asleep on the couch. Mom was in my bed and my grandparents had rushed to our house to be with Mom. They were asleep in her bed. I awoke to the sound of what can only be described as a boulder rolling down the sidewalk. It was a moonless night and had to be sometime after midnight. It was as dark as dark could be…so dark that I sat up, pulled down my lower eyelid and stuck my finger to my eyeball just to be absolutely awake. Yep, I was awake.
Through the front door walked Walter…well, a blurry white Walter. He walked through the door, gave a little wave to me, and walked into the kitchen, disappearing through the door of my brother’s room.
“Mom, Mom. Wake up.” I shook my mother awake. I told her what had just happened. “Go back to sleep. It was just your imagination.” Resigned I returned to the couch. I laid there saddened that my mother didn’t believe me. I know what I saw!
I wasn’t scared, you see…but excited because I knew there was something after death. It was Walter but it wasn’t. It was his ghost, his spirit bidding me farewell.
