Maryanne Muller

We were best friends. The year was 1958.

The town was Bayside. A New York suburban town. An old neighborhood with no sidewalks and many remnants of a time gone by. An old home up the street took up nearly a block and an abandoned stables spoke of a time before cars. The white peeling paint on the wooden splintering structure spoke volumes of its demise and nearness to its dismantle.

Face detail of La Madonnina atop the Duomo, Cathedral in Milan, Italy.

Maryanne was my across the street best friend. We played every day and always looked both ways in the paved not so oft driven street to cross safely.

We played in her garage sometimes, shaded and cooler in the summer. A near off limits hideout we discovered by Mr. Muller’s hands on hips and words of caution. The sun behind him made him a tall kind but trying to be stern shadow.

We played in her room and she explained how she shared her room with her parents separated by a bureau where colored pictures of Jesus and Mary and saints were everywhere. She told me how Jesus was born. I marveled at the way Mary looked at her baby. I was a little jealous of having these tiny colored drawings. Since I was Jewish, I was told in a simple manner it wasn’t for me to need or understand right then or something that waved me off the topic for the time.

We dug holes with mother approved serving spoons in my backyard. Mixed with rocks and water and dumped out in lumps to bake in the sun.

She got a cough and then she was sicker. Maryanne was taken to the hospital.

There was a knock on the door one evening. The sun was just down. Mommy opened the door and I saw Mr. Muller behind the screen looking as he always seemed to in a t shirt and trousers. Sitting at the top of the stairs and facing them from above I waited to hear. I was a blank. Waiting. She had opened the door and then the screen enough to talk but not to let the dog out bending awkwardly, holding his collar. Closing the screen door then the front door she turned to me and approached the stairs.

“Maryanne” she said, had had “pneumonia”. It had become “double pneumonia” and I figured it had become twice as bad. She had been given “penicillin but it didn’t help enough. She was just too sick. Maryanne is dead. She won’t be coming home”. She lingered at the stairs to see if, who knows what. I took the news. I wanted to laugh, giggle and knew that was wrong and didn’t know why it was my first reaction. I looked away ashamed. I had a hollowness come over me and just couldn’t know how the next day would be. She left me alone on the stairs.

I went to my room.

I inherited Joanie, Maryanne’s little sister. Maryanne and I had rarely included her. She was almost two years younger and really kind of too young to be my playmate. Without Maryanne, Joanne and I tried. I taught her to look before crossing the road yelling to her from my edge of the driveway. She didn’t know the garage game I tried to teach her but didn’t catch on. She was bad at dirt. She was so sad and so was I. We tried. The Muller’s moved away shortly after this time. The guilt of the feeling of letting Joanie down weighed on me for years.

Children are people. Children don’t forget. They just don't. When a child is gone, they are gone forever. The families will never be the same, or the child’s friends forever denied of their friendship and comfort in that.

Guns. There is no penicillin for a gun. Gun restrictions must be done. Gun owners do not need to agree to the limits. It will be tough. We are living the alternative. Stop gun violence by stopping guns.

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