Writer Photos Darrell J Banks

Bye Mary Ann

By Darrell J Banks

CR 2020-2021

Comedy about things often takes away the sting of life.  Were their comics doing the bubonic plaque, the Spanish Flu?

Clearly its done with COVID 19.

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But what crosses the line between total fear of a virus; the cough the sneeze the dreaded I know you but the stay the fuck away from me.

We all want a long life, immortality.  But knowing that everyone, everything that breathes that you care about will die. Is well depressing.

I’ve lost track of all the people I knew since March of 2020 who have died from COVID 19. I think it was the 11^th one. That did it for me.  Benny Napoleon was a friend’s friend.  The one that affected me the most was Carrie Gray.  Darrell she would say and smile. 

Carrie was my heroine. Engineer, legal counsel, worked with Lee Iacocca, world traveler.   I met her through a friend, yet there she was slugging it out with us at Frank Murphy.

Which was a lesson in life, no matter how high or low we have to carry on.

Thus, the shudder when I learned Mary Ann had died from Gilligan’s’ Island.  Well.

Gilligan’s Island Mary Ann for anyone under 50 was one of the two stuck on the island ( not THE ISLAND, but Gilligan’s Island).  There were sport radio shows that spent hours on the debate who did you prefer Mary Ann or Ginger.

Mary Ann was one of the castaways, who wore Gidget shorts and was the practical next-door brunette.

Obtainable.

If she had died in her sleep, or was run over by a bus on the strip.  You would say it was a nice or a tragic way to die.

But FUCKING COVID 19.    The virus that keeps on taking humans from infancy to old age.  FUCK THAT.

COVID-19 19 is like waking up in a 10-month run twenty-four-hour movie marathon of a Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13^th, Hell Raiser, with a replay of Halloween I every three hours.

I remember the religious Tv host singing COVID 19, COVID 19, literally singing it, like that Gilligan’s Island theme song.  The professor and Marianne here on Gilligan’s’ Isle.

Well, stop that song.  I’m tired.  Forget warp speed, teleport me, give me the vaccine.  Let me travel to Canada, visit Hawaii. Not be afraid to hug my daughter.

So, I’ll say goodbye Mary Ann ( Dawn Wells) and I hope to see you and the crew on the stair way to heaven.

Ciao.