A Word

Not very long ago I had two sisters.

Covid flew unexpectedly into the upper west side of Manhattan on an August night and brought the youngest of our once intact trio home, far earlier than anticipated.

During the decades we shared I cannot count the many times each and all of us uttered the infamous words:

“She said,,”

Sometimes followed by:

“She did or I didn’t”

The oft repeated phrases and/or accusations were uttered and applied not only to the youngest of our trio but equally to each and all of us at different diverse moments of time during the seven decades we shared.

We were sisters, but not a close knit trio. Life divided us by years (16, and 10) to be exact, and as a consequence, we were not all of the same generation..

Fortunately, none of us had a television platform or book publisher for our silly and trivial complaints, merely a phone line constantly connecting three area codes.

Mary Elizabeth, the youngest, the most agile,(the most talented,) and also, the one first to leave this earth, was the sole family member to maintain a NYC area code for her allotted time on earth.

It was only her two older and not necessarily wiser, siblings who both early in life abandoned not the homestead but the once beloved “neighborhood.”

I cannot help but remember my departed sister today as more and more of the inane “He said,” quotes flash uninvited across my news screen, and I find myself speaking aloud in an empty room:

“Oh, Harry, let it go.

“We’ve all been there, made mistakes, blamed another. It is not worth the future anguish when fate takes charge. Beware, even royalty doesn’t get a second chance on the Carousel of life.”

But I rather doubt the troubled young Prince hears me or the loud chorus of other voices echoing a word oft-spoken by Anna King Donlon, our Mother:

“Enough!”