Loss

loss |lôs; läs|
noun
the fact or process of losing something or someone : avoiding loss of time | funding cuts will lead to job losses | loss-making industries.
• the state or feeling of grief when deprived of someone or something of value : I feel a terrible sense of loss.

It’s always the same. The incredulous phone call, the rushed explanations, the hopeful tone. Then the daily updates – sometimes good, sometimes bad, but eventually all the same. There’s the cloned parking lots, every visitor exactly alike, the harshly lit hallways, the blue carpets (with a tasteful diamond-shaped print in mustard), the paintings of small Greek islands, the smell of decay and excrement, the glazed-over eyes, the rushed paperwork.

Then the dreaded five steps from the door to a small heap of flesh and dust under white sheets that smell of blood. The bluish hands, limp like little dead birds that flutter their broken wings in the back of your mind forever. The sunken-in eyes that reveal nothing of the passions and regrets of a lifetime, that remember nothing of the sunlight through blond curls. The brave smile that holds only the knowledge that one day every pillar will fall, every dream will be exposed and ridiculed, that even love is subject to atrophy.