1981 (Part Twenty-four)

The burial ceremony was brief.

There were many more people than I expected. It was the first burial ceremony I ever attended in my entire life. Scores of nurses from the school of nursing were in attendance. All of them wore dark glasses and white uniforms. They looked like angels. I didn’t know many men were in the nursing profession. They stood together in the blazing son, men and women, some wiping their faces with handkerchief, others lifting up their glasses and dabbing up tears.

Rufus could tell something was wrong when he opened the door and saw me. All he needed to do was to take one look into my eyes and he could read me like a book. First, I had been gone all day. All I went do was to drop off Josephine and Gina. He expected that I would be back within an hour, maybe two maximum. The hospital was not that far, maybe fifteen minutes. I left before 8 am, and it was 6 pm when I came back.