They Laughed at My Mother’s Bald Head — So I Did the Only Thing a Child Could Do, and the Whole Street Went Silent

The Day Dad Said “Say Goodbye”

I was eight when Dad drove me to the hospital on a gray afternoon, the kind of day when even the sun spoke softly. Inside the elevator, he held my hand and said we might have to tell Mom goodbye—for a while, maybe forever. I didn’t understand what kind of place a mother could go that a child couldn’t follow.