Wednesday, the day after my mom's memorial service and burial, was predictably difficult. I felt lost, unmoored. I still do, I guess.
Thursday and Friday were a little bit more bearable, although I still didn't feel like myself. I won't for a while, I suppose. Maybe I never will.
A longtime friend of mine who is a Court of Appeals Judge sent me a text with his condolences. His text hit me hard.
So sorry to hear about your mom. You are a good son. And regardless of what you may experience in the rest of your life, a boy only loses his mama one time. After that the world will never look the same. But it's brighter with good thoughts and good memories. Let me know if I can do anything.
And I think he's right. I don't think the world - my world - will ever look or feel the same again. I'm trying to come to grips with that, today and, really, since Tuesday.
It's Sunday morning, early, and I'm having a cup of coffee at the Frothy Monkey, like I have so many Sundays over the past couple of years. The difference, of course, is that I won't leave here and drive down to see my mom at NHC Place.
Last Sunday, I got coffee early and picked up donuts then delivered them to the staff at the Courtyard at NHC Place. It was a chance for me, I guess, to say my own goodbye to the staff and the residents. To the whole facility. I laid on top of my mom's bed for a few minutes and looked out the window. The empty bird feeder made me sad, as I always imagined her watching the birds from her bed in the mornings after I filled it with a safflower cylinder. That made me happy.
I looked around her room and tried to take it all in. Her room had been a sanctuary of sorts, for her, or so I imagined it. In truth, in the Courtyard, she spent most of her time in the common area, or community room, as it's properly called. At least, that's where she always was when I arrived to see her.
Still, her room had a homey, lived in feel. Tracy and Alice did such a good job furnishing it, taking care to hang photos, pictures and a photo quilt from her house to make it feel more like home.
Yesterday morning, Tracy and Alice packed her belongings and oversaw the moving of her furniture back to her house. That's sad but inevitable, of course, because someone needs the room and it makes no sense to pay close to $300 a day to store her things in it. I may try to stop by tomorrow to see the room, empty, before someone else is in it. But I may not, because it probably will break my heart.
I'm not sure I'm grieving, as much as I'm deflecting and distracting myself with other activities. I know that since Wednesday, anyway, I've not been dwelling on my mom's death or the week at the hospital leading up to her death. At some point, I'm going to need to write about that in detail, I know, but not yet.
I have a mediation tomorrow. On the one hand, it will be nice to have work to distract me from my grief. On the other hand, though, mediations take a lot of patience on my part and the ability to manage and deal with strangers' emotions. I'm not sure I'll be able to connect with the people I'm mediating for and to properly empathize with them given my present state of mind but I'll try, for sure.
Mostly, I feel tired. And sad.
That will change over time, I hope.
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