about #37 below...

the five things i always have with me? keys, bling, etc? a pack of smokes was one of them. i need to replace it with something. anything really.

my mom is laying in a hospital bed set up in her dining room, dying. we got the news i've been dreading for so long now last thursday. her poor body has done all the fighting it's capable of, and now it's time for the shuffling to commence.

o to be tied so temporarily to this mortal coil, knowing one's time is about to be up... and my poor mother is only 61 years old. everyone is on their way to see her. the rest of her siblings (her second oldest sister, a retired nurse, has been here for almost a month doing much of the heavy lifting of taking care of her) are on their respective ways here now.. so much to say and so very little time to say it.

i am luckier than some in that my relationship with my mother hasn't been terribly contentious. nothing beyond the normal teenage shit that lasted about 3 weeks before i came to my senses. it's making it harder for me now, though. i have so much to lose with her death. what am i going to do without my biggest cheerleader? how am i going to hold it together and be of some help to the many who will feel her loss like the keenest kind of knife wound? and how am i going to have anything left for myself? i've lapsed into this surreal pragmatism, and i can't seem to help it.

my mind is on autopilot right now, and it's probably best for me to continue to indulge myself. the losing my shit is inevitable, but it's not going to do anyone, least of all myself, any good for now.

for now, i am comforting myself with the knowledge that, by rights, she should have died 9 years ago when she was first diagnosed with cancer. a cure was not possible because of the circumstances... metastatic lung cancer can be at best managed. it turns out it was always with her. perhaps it took everything she's been through this year to make it rear it's ugly, and lethal, head, but i can't think about that now. it WAS managed, though, and she had 9 more years with us. 9 more years to see her kids become who they were meant to be, 9 years with her husband. 9 years to rediscover her own family, and bond once again with her sisters and brother.

i am so grateful she got to see me meet, fall in love with, and marry my precious wen'l. it gives me great comfort to know she thought him worthy of her firstborn. it breaks my heart too, though, because of the deep love shared by the two of them is making the inevitability of her death so hard for him.

i know you all know i'm an atheist. i also know there's a whole lot of people tonight who could really use a prayer, and if you're of the heart and mind to do that, please say one for all of them. for all of us.