It's now been two months since Mama died. Some days I feel almost steady, as if I had a limp but suddenly my leg is stronger, but the moment I plant my foot firmly on Earth, the limp is back, with twice the pain. I am re-reading the things I posted on Facebook while Mom was sick. Several people have thanked me for those posts and I think it's because no one talks about the day to day thoughts and feelings one experiences while watching a loved one die.
But back to today...For the last two months, I have not heard my mother's voice. (Save for a voice mail I still have on my cell where she only says "Are you home safe?" which I have listened to at least 20 times.) But prior to her death, I heard her voice every day for 51 years of life. We talked every day. We liked each other. She wanted to know every single thing about my day every day for my entire life. I think the loneliness is the hardest part of the loss because frankly I'm just not quite that interesting to anyone else. Loving me and my father were Mom's reason to get up each morning. That's what she did. She loved us and she loved us well. And she loved a lot of other people well, too. I still feel the afterglow of her love on me, but I can't hear the sound of it anymore.
At night I lay in bed hugging her Teddy Bears and after just two months of my constantly sniffing them can't smell her on them anymore, either. I have boxes of her things my cousin has mailed and I can't open them for fear I will let the smell out and won't have any way at all to feel her close to me.
And even as I type these words I hear how crazy they sound, but they are in fact the truth as it stands today.
