With five sisters all barely more than a year apart,

the middle child became a sandwich.

Julie, Lori, *Kelly *, Carol, Linda.

When it suited her, she identified as "Us Three Little Guys," but she aligned herself with Julie and Lori whenever "Us Three Big Guys" were doing something exciting.

Guys, yes. We labeled ourselves "guys." Wiseguys, big guys, little guys.

The middle child,

the filling, the one that unites--
How will I ever get used to mentioning her in the past tense?

We have so few photos from our 1960s, Black-and-White, low-tech childhood. Our only color photos came from School Picture Day. Someone had the brilliant idea of gluing ours to this board and varnishing it. This is the closest thing we have to a group photo of the Five Sisters.

That's Kelly, sandwiched in the middle.

The bottom row is all that's left of the five: "Us Two Little Guys." Here is a more flattering view of us (I'm on the left:

Not all middle kids embrace being "sandwiched,"

but this author made the best of it (I reviewed the book here but cannot find the link today):

A Susanna Sandwich by Meghan Merrick

It's a sweet, nostalgic book, set in that era before cell phones, a time when children played outside without adult supervision after school and board games, not video games, ruled.

This board game was one of Kelly's favorites.

source

She would rally us all to play it, and she would win, every single time. She was incredibly fast at cards, and I'm not sure I ever won a game with her. Linda just stopped playing cards with Kelly. She was #unbeatable!

Which is why I truly believed Kelly was going to be the miracle woman, the one who'd beat cancer, against all odds. Who could imagine the unbeatable sister BEATEN, broken, battered, begging for morphine, never getting enough of it?

Kelly died on Palm Sunday after a terrible, insanely painful battle with Stage 4 Stomach Cancer. From November to April, she went from a vibrant, energetic, fitness-promoting marathon runner to a Prisoner of War, emaciated, battered, tortured, robbed of all vitality and dignity. Our oldest sister Julie was missing from November to March, so this was already a challenging time of year, with Julie found dead in a ditch during Lent of 1976. Spring is my favorite season but Easter
is not my favorite holiday.

I have not been active here because my mind has been all about Kelly and Lori, who we buried in September. Two months later, Kelly's diagnosis hit. Half a year later, Kelly is gone.

The sandwich is getting down to the crusts.

In a lame effort to stay on topic here, Blog of the Month: New Theme for 12 April 2022, I'll finally mention the other kind of #sandwich. Thick slabs of home-made white bread, with butter, and ham. Or, grilled cheese, with Mom's garden-grown tomato soup.

source: thebeerczar

Distant memories,

for me: after a lifetime of headache and malaise, the diagnosis came: I'm painfully allergic ("intolerant") to gluten, eggs, and dairy, and I have yet to find a "bread" recipe that is worth eating. I've found some marginally edible hamburger buns.

I really miss sandwiches.

But I miss my sisters more than anything.

I've blogged about Julie and Lori. And our mother, who lost her own mother in infancy, her father when she was 30, her firstborn daughter at 38, then her second daughter AND her third daughter in her 84th year.

Kelly, Lori, our mom

Kelly got four years with her first grandchild.

She kept holding on, refusing to let go, to just die and be done with it; she wanted to meet the second grandchild. This tiny baby arrived three weeks early, as if to make sure Kelly got to meet her, but Kelly was "unresponsive" (in a morphine coma), so we can only hope/believe Kelly "knew" that baby had arrived safe and well, and she could let go, at last. (Hours later, she did.) But that is a whole other story. Too poignant for me to "sandwich" into this post.