For almost forty years Charles Ratliff and wife Virginia have been in charge of the fund raising bingo for the Brook Haven Exchange Club. The bingo games are the biggest fundraisers for the group, and Charles and Virginia had been married for nearly sixty two years.
Virginia was eighty three years old and she set out in her car to se her husband in hospital. It was only one of a few times over the past six years that she had driven, as she was prone to sever bouts of dementia. However she insisted on driving herself as her husband had been admitted and needed one or two things from home.
Every year for forty years, Virginia and Charles got together and contacted local businesses to donate prizes for the annual fund raising event. The organized the bingo game and loved doing it. But now the annual fundraising bingo game is running without Virginia and the thrill is gone for Charles.
Charles says she was “his right hand”, people, police and troopers have searched all through Mississippi for her and the 1999 Mercury she was driving, but all has been in vain. No one knows if she is dead or alive, just that she is not by his side at the bingo where she belongs.
It has been six months since Virginia went missing, and as Charles sits in a lawn chair in front of the bingo machine, with his elbows resting on pillows, he is greeted by big smiles from visitors. He dons the red top hat and calls the bingo numbers through the microphone, but his heart is not in it. His heart is out on Interstate 55, wondering where his beloved wife has gone.
Charles lies awake in the night, in the middle of an empty bed and cries himself back to sleep.
Tags: Bingo, bingo game