The lie

so in a restaurant a waitress needed to leave
her dad is in the hospital and may not make it much longer.

her body shook with the intense emotions of fear.
And tears fell as the sadness, so stifling takes over.
she inhales and stands up strait as if she was going to
serve customers

then conflict fills her
tell boss !
go to dads side !
clock out !
Gotta go !
Collect tips !
Gotta GO!


Then the cycle starts again she says frantically
" I gotta go"
then heads over to the time clock
"it wont, LET me punch out"
"stupid thing won't let me punch OUT"

"I GOTTA GO!!" with tear filled eyes, "and it wont let me leave"
"I gotta Go, My dad need me and this FUcking thing wont let me clock OUT!!"

Coworker comes to her rescue "Don't worry about clocking out, Just Leave! Go To the Hospital and be with your father"

The chaos felt by the waitresses was huge.

The greatest lie smacked her unexpectedly and hard and she was not ready.
fear
panic
disbelief
all at once and others.

Reality strikes.





People die.

She saw it on TV,
Talked about it with her customers many times before.

The street person that died yesterday meaningless to her, she joked how she did not understand how the bum froze to death "as much dirt as he had on him it should have insulated him" ha ha ha

The boy that starved to death when his crack head mom abandoned him, and she said that his life would be better dead, than a life of misery and drugs.

The person tied up and tortured and killed days later - in reality meaningless to her, she says "your body goes into shock and you don't feel the pain after a while"


Death is all around,
yet she lied it actually existented,
lied about grief by making jokes
Lied to herself of the horrors just before death.


But somehow she thinks that her dad dying is different.
Like his death is important and meaningful.
So important that she can ignore the customers at the restaurant and add workload to her co-workers by leaving early.


Somehow her dad in the hospital is more important than anything else in her life.


and three weeks or a month from now she will lie to herself once again that death doesn't really happen, except of course smacked up side the head when the waves of memories of her now dead father overwhelm her.