Me

I want to tell you a story about a little girl.

Once upon a time, there was a large family that lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  Most of the people in the family were practical and solid.  They thought about things that were real and important and could be touched.  They all had very dark hair and eyes.  And they all were built likeell, like farmers.

But the two youngest kids were different.  They had blond hair, hazel eyes, translucent skin and freckles with delicate little bodies.  Where the rest were down to earth, these two were whimsical, always off in one fantasy or another.  Now the older ones in the family certainly had their moments of silliness, and the two young ones certainly did their share of work, and they all loved each other dearly, but the two youngest ones bonded together in a way that was different from the rest. It was almost like they were twins even though the girl was more than a year younger than the boy.  

They didn fit in with the rest of their family but it didn matter because they had each other.  And they had Buffy, Jody and Mrs. Beasley.  You see, there was this TV show with a little boy (Jody) and a little girl (Buffy) and her doll (Mrs. Beasley).  Buffy and Jody were about the same age as the little boy and girl Ie been telling you about. They even looked a lot like them.  They were always off on some adventure or other, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary, but always exciting.  And these kids were also sort of outsiders in their own family, because their parents had died.

So, our two would often play as if they were the kids on TV.  Of course, one of them would always be sure to mention xcept our parents are alive.SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  They loved their mom and dad very much and didn want anything bad to happen to them, and they knew something might if they forgot to mention this difference.  Of course, that the kind of thinking that set them apart from the rest of the family.

And then two important things happened. One was a nice thing: the little girl got a doll just like the one on TV for her birthday. The other was a horrible thing: they found out the little boy was very sick.  He had a brain tumor.

The doctors operated and the little boy was in the hospital for a long time.  The little girl missed him a lot and couldn wait for him to get home.   But they weren able to get all of the tumor, and the part that was left was pressing on his brain and causing him to act like a different person.  Despite what she was told, the little girl believed he would get better.  She wouldn give up waiting for that day to come.

(Yes, I know it was as bad for the other siblings and worse for the little boy and the mom and dad, but this story is about the little girl.)

The doctors said the little boy wouldn live six months, but he actually lived for a few more years.  Most of the time, he couldn play with the little girl.  She read to him, even though she wasn very good at it and, truthfully, hated to read, but it was a way to spend time together.  But he was very, very sick.  And their mom was so busy taking care of the little boy she didn have much time to spare for the little girl.  But the little girl didn have to be lonely or scared or bored because she always had her doll with her.  Always.  And Mrs. Beasley would never change or leave her or be too busy or preoccupied.

Two more important things happened, although the little girl was never sure afterwards what order they happened in.  The most terrible thing ever was that the little boy died.  Her other half was gone forever. 

The other thing happened one day when the girl came home from school (where everyone treated her like she was from Mars because they all knew about her brother).  She went to her room to get her doll like usual.  But Mrs. Beasley wasn there.  The little girl ran to her mom in the kitchen, but her mom said she had thrown the doll out.

The little girl couldn believe what she was hearing.  The mom said she had eplaced every bit of her a dozen times over. (The girl wildly thought nd you couldn do it one more time?   here was nothing left of her,explained her mom.  (xcept her sweet face, the sweetest face ever, and her adorable little handsthe little girl screamed in her head.)   Her mom said on go looking for her in the garbage.  You won find her.Her mom was reasonable, and sensible, and she meant to be kind.

The little girl fled to her room where she cried and cried and cried.  And now the other half was gone forever, and that didn leave anything left for the little girl.

She still misses them both, every day.