Any day now

My mom passed away a week ago. I don't really feel like talking about it or writing about it. Today my dad said to me that he feels like he has to put on a performance of grieving every time someone calls him to talk about what happened. I agree -- whenever one of my mom's friends calls to check on me, or when people bring casseroles and pies over to my parents' apartment and want to hear about how I'm feeling, I have to fake it and make a little speech, and then they tell me I sound strong.

The truth is, I think I probably am strong, and I guess I will admit that it gives me a (terrible, smug) sense of satisfaction that I'm the only one of my dad's kids who's been reasonable and sensible about this whole thing, in spite of the fact that it's my mother -- not theirs -- who's dead. But it's also true that I would trade that sense of satisfaction for someone I could count on, or even just someone who would always be around to understand what I'm feeling and tell me I'm doing okay.

And, the truth is that I am doing okay. But I'm also not doing okay. I feel like I'm already working through things, but at the same time like I'll never get through this. I don't want to think about it, but I can't think about anything else. I don't want to write about this in my blog, but I feel like it would be wrong not to, and just as wrong to write about anything else. I don't want anything anymore -- to make something good, to fall in love, to become enlightened -- but I want tons of things -- a new house, a new car, new boots, a trip to London. It feels exactly the same as any other February of my life, any other week, but also like nothing else. I'm not sure if I'm even feeling the feeling or just feeling a feeling about a feeling that's still indescribable and inaccessible even to me.

I told my dad that I think we're traumatized. The thing is, next to the abstract truth that my mother doesn't exist in this world anymore, that she's never coming back, is the reality of the terrible illness that destroyed her body. And the reality of the last month of her life in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. I wish I could talk or write about the visions of my mother's sickness and death that are burned into my brain, but it feels too private. Like the things I said to my mom and the songs we listened to together on my ipod on her last days, all that stuff is stuck between her and me. No one else except for my dad really understands what happened, and as much as I can pretend that doesn't matter when I'm reassuring people about it, it does matter, and I can't imagine that there will ever be a time when I don't feel sad and angry about that anymore.

But I know patience is the thing. Like all feelings, this one is going to take time to develop. Something is changing in me, I think -- it must be. And in a month or a year or seven years I'll be able to look back and see that, no matter what else, today was the beginning of something.