The rays of the sun were gentle and warm upon my cheeks, which had remained dry all morning, regardless of the sadness that weighed on my heart. There was a slight wind, calming the pressing air of mid-July, which lifted the loose strands of hair away from my face and ruffling the stiff blue ribbons that matched the soft color of my dress. The mixed scents of various flowers drifted on the breeze to sweep beneath my nostrils, and I needed to scratch my tickled nose, but I had not the incentive to move. A relative's hand rested on my right shoulder in consolation. All I could hear was the continuous sniffling and the droning but pleasant voice of the man from the church - what he was called I did not know - reciting line after beautiful line from the open brown book he held in his hands.

I forced myself to look down at the polished wooden casket, and the swirling sea of colors which seemed to engulf it in a fragrant embrace, and thought of the beloved body inside it. I had lost her. She had been so full of love and life, and joy for me, her only granddaughter. Now who would be there to buy me anything I wished for? Now who would be there to pick me up after school on Wednesdays and take me to dance class? Now who would there be to insist that if I ate my carrots like a good little girl, I would suddenly be blessed with gorgeous brown curls? It was so difficult for me to imagine as an eight-year-old that I would no longer feel her smooth, plump arms around me, no longer see her before my eyes. She was gone.

As the man dressed in black finished his speech, I turned my very young face to the sky, to its strong blueness and vastness and prayed for her to arrive safely in heaven, and for her to have a television so she could watch Benson, her favorite television show. I asked God to look after her and give her lovely white wings. At that moment the crowd began to disperse and as my mother walked toward me with her usual, brisk step, I ran into her arms, not stopping to wipe away the tears which now were pouring from my hazel eyes, releasing all the sorrow I had contained for many days. My mother did not cry, which I did not understand. This was her mother. Her own mother, and did she not feel?

I asked her later in my innocence why she had not cried when Nana died. Her answer was, as she stroked my hair, "I cried so much and so hard when she was in bed dying, I guess I just had no tears left."n