My eyes burned. The lights were bright. The waiting room was quiet and my ears rang. Most people were on their phones, the only sound coming from the lowered volume. It smelled sterile, like someone had dropped me into a can of Lysol.

I probably should have been more sad.  I was only there because my mother was hooked up to a handful of machines in the other room. I probably didn’t know how to pronounce half of them.

The room felt calm, and it was making me sleepy. I felt calm and relaxed despite the circumstances. I hadn’t known at the time.

My dad pulled me and my sister into a room, away from the company of the other strangers. It was one made just for this purpose and looking back on it, you could tell. There was a couch and several boxes of tissues on a coffee table. The doors had locks on them, so no one would walk in on something like this.

I cried, sure, but sometimes I feel like it wasn't enough. 

I had never seen my father in a state like this. He never cried. Not ever.

But he was choking on his words in front of me.

“Your mother is dying.”

The words hit my sister like a freight train thrown off its tracks. She immediately started sobbing and threw herself onto my dad. She was only nine years old.

It took me a moment to process it. I just sat. Maybe stared off a bit. It felt like someone had snipped the cord of nerves right at the base of my neck. I was floating, miles up in the sky with a desperate need to get back on land, but I was untethered. I felt… inhuman. I felt like an alien. Like I had peeled back the skin to my emotions and they were stuck. 

I don’t know when I started, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. My dad pulled me into a hug and I was breaking down against him like it was my last chance to ever feel anything again.

The freight train had flipped over, taking me out with it.

I visited my mother quite a bit. More than I did before I knew. I never knew what to say so I just sat in silence.

I was happy a few times. I would drag my uncle down to the cafeteria and we would explore from there. I forgot about it, when we were wandering around. I suppose it wasn’t too out of place. I tend to distract myself even now.

I remember trying to convince my dad to let me stay overnight once. I was told that my body needed rest and that I had to go home.

My mom was there for a week. I discovered that yes, coffee can be good sometimes. Especially when you want to be awake when you're well beyond your limits. My dad even found a way to enjoy it when it was black and bitter. 

Maybe he was preparing for the funeral.

I remember her funeral. The dress I wore was plain, and my flats had rubbed the back of my ankles completely raw. 

My hair was still long back then.

Sometimes I wonder what she would say if I told her I was a boy now.

Either way, I cried. 

Everyone cried. My mom had been forty and died of a stroke. “She was so young.”

My sister was a loud crier. I learned to be quiet about it at some point along the way. (Some things never change.)

We were on a bench and my grandmother hugged me. We picked out a few roses from one of the bouquets on her coffin. They smelled like someone had tried to mask the smell of mould with perfume.

They died soon.

I remember wishing I were the roses.