Sitting in hospitals always were depressing. The constant beep beep droned on like dwindling life, when the weary struggle with time was lost, a life was lost with it. The nurses and doctors bustled around faces masked by robotic conclusions. Never having a sincerely hopeful assurance. The hospital always seemed to be a barren wasteland that made life come to a freezing point, from there it either was taken or it slowly melted away. It begged to be released from the ongoing spell of silence that dripped from every wall, crept in every crevice, oozed from every ceiling and lay on every floor.



I tried to distract myself by reading a magazine in the waiting room but the empty feeling of doom grasped and tightened its grip on my heart. I noticed an old man not able to see his wife complaining to the women at the desk. My heart ached for this man. His reality, unlike mine felt so real, so emotional, so grown up. The shame that came from my unaccepting, cowering, mind, came over me. Then the dread took over, the dread of my own incapable, weakening, walk down the somber hall to the hushed goodbyes of family to a statue that resembles a grandmother I used to know. My reality stopped me from moving; it took me over and paralyzed me. All I could do was taste a word that danced, tiptoed then depleted on my tongue. “Grandma” a simple word, with a telltale, eloquent, meaning, that I no longer was able to utter.