When there are things to do in other places, things more important than washing dish after dish after dish, it can make your ears burn. You should be there, but you're not. There is a quiet, almost unspoken knowledge that when bad things happen space needs to be created.
The closer you are to a funeral, the longer you wait to go to the wake. When someone is in a hospital, you wait until they have been home a few days. People need their rest, you have been told.
I stand at the sink in the restaurant waiting for more dishes. We are slow tonight. I could go home. That is almost worse. I could go to the hospital, where she is, but her great-aunt will be there.
There are three divisions in the sink. Scrub, rinse, dunk. Every so often the water cools in the first department. I have to drain it, refil it. I lower my hands until I feel the heat on my palms. The water moves, swirls, the chemicals slicking the surface into rainbows that flash and simmer away.

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