Thirty-Nine Years of Mourning

WARNING: This story will not make you laugh.

    Every year, around her birthday, Nellie tells me again about when her mother died. I think she doesn't remember that she's told me before. I knew it was coming when I arrived to find her fretful and depressed; almost as soon as I sat down, she began to talk.
    "It was today that I brought my mother home from the hospital. Thirty-nine years ago today, I brought her home because her cancer had come back and the nurse told me that if I didn't want her body to be given to the students for dissection I should take her home right away. There was nothing else they could do. The cancer was all through her body this time, even though it had gone away for awhile. So I brought her home and tried to make her comfortable. I didn't know what to do. It was horrible, awful. She tried to be brave, and then she cried and shouted and I couldn't figure out what she wanted. She understood then that she was about to die, and she told me that I mustn't cry. She didn't want any tears.
    "So when she died a few days later, I tried not to cry. It would have been easier if I could have just cried, but my mother didn't want me to. What could I do? That was her wish. My neighbors wanted to help me with the funeral meal, but I couldn't do it. On the seventh day, I let them help me spread a table of sweets because it is our tradition and I sat there with the other women, but I couldn't cry. It was my birthday, but now all I can think of every year is when my mama died."
    She was crying now. And what could I say? Thirty-nine years of sadness, bottled up inside--all I could do was hold her hand and rub her back until she calmed a little. Her sweet 91-year-old roommate looked with concern at her tears and asked me what was wrong. "She's remembering when her mother died," I explained softly.
    "I'm so sorry," she whispered back.
    "Will you be alright?" I asked Nellie. She nodded, and I hugged her goodbye reluctantly.
    As I gathered my things, her roommate said quietly, "I'll take care of her."

    More than my lifetime ago, she wasn't allowed to cry...but Nellie still mourns.