Two weeks ago today, we were holding Mom’s graveside service. I looked at the calendar and did a few mental calculations to be sure it was then, because it feels like it could have been just yesterday, or maybe a year ago. Time has taken on that strange, erratic behavior that time has during crisis or upheaval. I keep trying to grasp at days, or memories of days, as they float through my head. Trying to force them back into their proper place, make them line up right. But mostly they’re still just floating vaguely around.

I suppose it’s the self-protective nature of the brain that causes everything to be a bit blurry and uncertain. It’s part of the plan to not allow me to see everything at once. Focus on this one aspect, this one day and the things that need to be done. Now, forget that day, let it float away, move on to the next one. Do not think about the loss, do not think about the loss.

Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of the injury that has been left behind. Sometimes I get close enough to see the edge of the wound.

Just a few days ago, I rearranged my dining room with pieces of furniture that we had brought from Mom’s house. I arranged the dishes attractively in the china cabinet. I put a table runner and pitcher on the dresser that I had repurposed as a buffet. Then I stepped back and looked at the effect with satisfaction. My very next thought was, “ooh, Mom is going to love this, I need to send her a picture.”

And suddenly I was standing at the edge of the abyss. The emptiness was disorienting, overwhelming.

My thoughts quickly refocused on feeling foolish, on small fears. What if I say something like that out loud? What if I talk about Mom in the present tense, as though she were still here? The fear of this happening has become preoccupying. It’s a strange little fear, but it gives my mind something to wrangle with.

Because it seems imperative to my mind that I think about something else. That I never see the entire loss. I never see just how large the wound is, how wide, how deep.

My sister and I talked a little last night. She was saying how badly she wished she could tell Mom about something that her husband and son were doing. Because that’s how it always worked. Mom was the one who received all of the stories, all of the news. Mom, Granmommy, was the witness to our lives.

Maybe that’s one reason the days keep floating away from me. It’s hard to orient everything that’s happened without her there to witness.

I want to write about Mom, about everything she meant to me and to our family. But that’s going to have to wait. It’s going to have to wait until I can get a handle on the days again, on my fears, on my sorrow. It’s going to have to wait until I can write it and then, without any worries of foolishness, think, “Mom is going to love this.”