Thirteen Weeks

Today is thirteen weeks since Mom took flight. There have been easier days and harder days. On easier days, I might only shed a few small tears. On harder days, it's an ugly eye-leak after another.

I have been so blessed to have friends check up on me -- say what you will for social media but it's been a godsend for my far-off friends and family to keep up with us. And whenever I get a message from someone just to say, "how are today, really?" I know I'm very blessed. 

I think Maddox has had the hardest time adjusting to Mom's absence. He may worship the ground that Papi walks on, but he was my mom's constant companion ever since he came into our lives. He and Nanny were inseparable. To this day, he refuses to hop up on her side of my parents' bed ... as if to say, "no, she's coming back so..." All he knows is she was here one minute and now she isn't. I took him to see her at Hospice and she tried to pet him. She knew he was there. He didn't hang around her like I would have thought. Perhaps he could sense the impending death from her scent, a body already decaying from organ failure. My brother took him to the cemetery. He laid near the foot of the plot and whimpered. This great, mighty, 120-pound wee beastie, whimpering at the final resting place. Breaks my heart. He's been in a funk now for thirteen weeks.

And for us...... the absence is so real. We're adjusted to it. I think that's all that can be said. I have little bursts of insights and memories hit me, usually driving into work..... They usually make me fan my face and try not to cry too much. We wait, yet again, for December and probate. We've already had two birthdays, Easter, Mother's Day (which was so hard anyway but just multiplied exponentially this year), a family wedding, and now getting prepared to face Mom's birthday that won't be, later this summer. She didn't get to hear our stories about the concert my brother and I attended. She's missing out on so much. So are we. 

But I do balance it by knowing she's free from pain, from a body that no longer functioned well, and from the anxiety that hounded her and she cleverly tried to hide. Mom's death, if nothing else, finally galvanized me to stop hiding my own battles with depression and anxiety. It's made me no longer ashamed to say, "I struggle" ... as she refused to do for herself.

And I think of her every single day.