11 December 2024

I really meant to write again before this

I’m a little surprised I didn’t announce it at the time, but my mother died Monday evening at what would have been 5:30pm my time. My cousin Kim notified me through my self-named Facebook page two hours later; I was not home and was square in the middle of some manual labor and nowhere near my phone, so I didn’t see it for a while after that.

I’ve been in something of a fog since then. If it takes less brain power, I’m your woman; I’ve posted the occasional stupid humor (including joking about the United Healthcare CEO shooter… yep, I’m one of those) and random observations here and there. But if I’m supposed to be eloquent about my mother’s passing, I think I am still too close to it.

I’m not beating myself up. I’m not eloquent anyway but one of my favorite authors, who is eloquent, is my near neighbor and went through mother-loss five years ago; only lately has he been able to write about it. (If you know who he is and you’ve been curious about his progress on the book, I am pretty sure he told me he’s supposed to be done with it by the end of the year, but I don’t know if he actually will pull that off. Even five years later, it is a painful thing for him to contemplate, and he stalled hard on it for a while.) My relationship with my mother was nowhere near as good as his was with his mother, but apparently that doesn’t insulate you from whatever this is.

I did post on Facebook not long after I heard. I’ve been feeling more and more lately like I might be starting to have actual friends again, and my pocket friends there did not disappoint. I was uncomfortably aware of how many of us are in the “motherless child” tribe now. It’s not a trait you particularly want to share with anyone.

Regardless of whatever issues one has had with one’s mother.

I had lots.

But I’ll leave it with this for now.