Death and Liberation The sweat on my cold palms shone like glitter as I traced the path of my lifeline with my tired eyes. The waiting room was still as the air conditioning in the hospital building pounded the twenty-degree spring relentlessly. A crumpled newspaper on the stand next to me was old and torn, as if someone had rudely thrown it away during a monetary loss due to the calm tide. Can you use Febreeze to get the smell of death out of the air? Or will you end up with a mixture of death and “fresh spring linen” afterwards? Where do the flowers go in the hospital room when the patient is dead? Do they wash the bags used to wrap the corpses? Can you erase memories from your mind like you can remove dirt from a bathtub with lye and hot water? I started asking myself trivial questions. Do they steam clean that ugly gray carpet or use the state budget to tear it out and replace it every few years? How much of the hospital budget do they spend on tissues for families' tears? Kleenex or a generic brand? Does being familiar with death make you immune to the effects of death? My brother worked with chefs at restaurants who told him they cut so many onions that their eyes were immune to tears while preparing dinner. I wondered if it worked the same way with death. So many thoughts ran through my mind and I became the goose that flies north in the fall. I was the moth denied the luxury of dying on his own terms, instead fluttering in the little crack of fluorescent lighting. I panicked and flew in frantic, disorganized patterns, constantly bumping into the bulb and plastic casing that trapped my curious fascination with light. It's exhausting... middle of paper... the room bothered to look up: everything was normal. I stepped outside into the scorching spring heat, feeling the tears evaporate from my cheeks. I sat on a sidewalk outside the hospital and buried my sobs into shaking palms. A homeless man with gray hair pushed his cart towards me and had the audacity to ask me if I had a spare cigarette. I pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket that I was saving for overpriced vending machines and told him to get away from me. He said "honey, this is all I've ever done" and pushed his creaky cart of things down the hill. I stared at his back as he walked away, wondering what that was supposed to mean. And in that moment, I felt the deepest sense of jealousy towards that man. What a luxury it must be to walk away from the situation, like a freed dove escaping from the cage of its negligent owner...