Current state

How things are now, post-celebration-of-life-wtf.

I’m okay. I’m calmer, mostly. In the best of circumstances I semi-dread travel no matter what and of course this trip had so many unknowns and was very loaded.

My beloved AB asked how I was feeling now that it is over. I didn’t know I felt this way until I responded, but I said that I thought now that all this was done, my mom would come back.

I’d gone through losing her in a significant way over two years ago, then her having leukemia, followed by spending time with her in remission and realizing that nothing would ever really get better—or at least different—with us. There were a few months of this holding pattern before I found out I’d be really—permanently—losing her forever in a matter of days. And the worst, probably, was the final loss of not being able to connect with her in any real way before she died.

This is probably just one version of how it would inevitably have been with us, no matter what or when. It’s just a lot to try to handle in a relatively short amount of time.

The mounting losses and the dread of the event—of seeing her friends and family… l understand that I was/am in no way able to actually feel or say or do anything. The cumulative effect is, yes, the familiar numbness.

So it caught me off guard to realize that I had some expecation all would return to whatever our normalcy was at the end of all this—that she would be back.