3 months (94 days)

When you lose someone the way we lost my mother, a very typical weekday summer evening suddenly interrupted by a medical emergency that ends with the beginning of a nightmare, you are left with a sense that life can now only be defined by that one night.

For me there is simply before and after and separating the two is that terrible, impossible, nightmarishly vivid night.

I want to write what happened that night, I think it will help me to let go of it a little. To accept the finality of what has happened. I've tried. I'm not there yet.

At this moment, and for the past couple of weeks as I've chosen to focus my energies on my own future, I feel like I've found some way to accept that She's not coming home. I no longer reach for the phone to talk to Her. Instead I find myself in constant conversation with her in my mind.

She is my strength as I clear out Her things.

She is my comfort when the tears start to flow.

She is my patience when I am frustrated by my new roles in the house.

She is my Mom, just as she always has been.