the return of the cry

I was maybe ten, standing in the parking lot of a hospital with my cousins, waving to my aunt who was on the fifth floor supposedly waving back to us. I couldn’t see her. They didn’t let children into hospitals then, so we stood outside hoping to catch a glimpse of her. My cousin Terry said she could see her and immediately started crying, which set off my other cousins crying. The hospital was a bad place; you only went there if you were really sick and if you were old you might never come out. My aunt was in her 40s. That was old to ten year old me. So I worried. But I didn’t cry. I tried, because everyone else was…