Entry Fifty-Three.
Friday, 2007.08.31, 12:27 AM CST.
An update on how I'm holding up.

Well, I have just gotten through a pretty rough day.

Yesterday (it is now a tad past midnight) was the one-month anniversary of my mother's death.  These last few weeks have gone by rapidly, but not without a significant amount of pain.  I still keep seeing her in my head and remembering how she looked and sounded during those last 12 days in her hospital room.  I especially remember holding her hand and watching that last sunset before she died, knowing that she and I would never see another one together.  She wanted so badly to get better, and it doesn't seem to make sense that she was taken away.

She wanted to get out and see my baby boy again.
She wanted to get out and go to the casino and play more Red Ball.
She wanted to get out and watch the new fall shows on TV.
She wanted to get out and try the new Wendy's Baconator™.

I keep thinking about her, and I dream about her often.  Sometimes she's alive and well in the dreams, but most of the time my mind just takes me back to that hospital room.

During my waking hours, I often find myself wanting to call her, like when I hear something new about Depeche Mode, or when I try some great new food somewhere, or just when I've found a new way to make X laugh.  My brain is cruel enough (or just ignorant enough) to give me a fraction of a second in which I think it might be possible - forgetting for the moment that she's dead, and thinking that I can just pick up the phone and dial up her number.

Then, after that moment has passed, reality catches back up with me, and I remember holding her hand just before they administered her morphine on that last day.  I remember being told by a pretty nurse named Shiloh, "She's gone," and being handed the stack of pictures of my son that had been just been removed from my mother's room. I remember standing out in the blazing heat, staring at my mum's coffin as the minister said a few closing words.

And, more often than any of that, I remember again those three precious sentences that she told me during that last real conversation:  "It'll all be okay.  I won't hurt no more...  I sure love you all."

Soon after she passed away, I thought I was making really good progress towards acceptance.  Now, I'm not so sure.  All I can say is that I'm trying.  I'm really trying.

It just hurts.  A lot.

Badger