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18 Apr 09

This is 6 years from when my lola died. It was the first time, as I recalled, that I cried / sobbed / heavily. I remember that time, how oddly that I forget random things. They randomly knock to remind me of these. We were in the hospital corridor, looking mum. It was a Good Friday on a Catholic calendar. We rushed there straight from the ancestral house in Mexico, P.

My uncle opens the door. There, you can see her sleep. She would've smiled if she knew how to, after years of bearing down pain in bed. After those, stories of numbness and a broken spirit; all those that you've listened to. If I knew how to smile, when I saw her, I would have. Sometimes, death makes you smile, in a short while. Then afterwards, you'll feel your lungs collapse and it's harder to breathe. Her pale skin is glossed by tears. Everyone is looking at her, confined in an unflattering bed, in an unflattering white pale fluorescent light. No wonder hospitals invite gloom. Their feet shuffling around, indecisively.

I headed out, passed the nurses, passed the stairs, looking for somewhere to sit. I am at the lobby, grey and concrete. There I find my uncle, smoking. I did not smoke, but I wondered how it eases the loss.

I haven't cried in a long time, but there.