The Clock Ticks...

Seven days. One week. A week ago today we had my mother’s wake. Hard to imagine it has only been seven days…feels more like seven years at times, then other times feels like only seven seconds have passed. Time slows down greatly when you are suffering from a loss. Time flies by with a blink of an eye when you are truly hurt. Time seems to stand still when you are grieving. Then all of a sudden time seems to speed up, as if on fast-forward. Then time comes to a screeching stop again. Then time hurls ahead again. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…never able to find the reality in it…never able to find the middle…everything is an extreme when you are wounded. Time is a tricky thing. Nothing seems real because your whole sense of time is off. Most of the time I don’t even realize what day it is unless I have the TV on. Today is Thursday…also Apprentice night. My mom’s favorite show was The Apprentice. She couldn’t stand Donald’s hair. She and most of America, it seems, hate his hair. Alex was fired. My mom liked him, she would not have been happy. So there it is…days, hours, minutes, seconds…all blur and get fuzzy. It simply doesn’t seem real.

Tomorrow we are going to go and get a head start on packing her things up at the house. A head start is needed because who knows what, if anything, will be untouched, unmoved, unsorted by my step-siblings if we waited until Saturday. I can think of a million things to call them…step-siblings is the most kind. I just keep telling myself that soon all the loose ends will be tied up and I can just get back to life and can just remember the good times my mom and I had. The good times my family had. If I can just get through this hell, everything will be better on the other side. Sometimes I feel like I am lying to myself. I am the king of denial. Denial is something I do well. Trust me…

More nightmares last night. Scary ones. Ones where I woke up and did not even realize I was dreaming until I was standing in the family room…half awake, half asleep…still looking for my mom. My sister is having nightmares as well. It is gonna be a long road for all of us….

I am still staying at my sister’s house. I have no rush to get back to the real world. I went back to my apartment in the cities to pick up my mail and get some things this afternoon. I was there, but it did not feel right. I knew that sooner or later I would be back at my apartment…and it would be because either my mom was better or my mom was gone. Since it is the latter, I have no desire to be there. I have no real desire to be anywhere. Lost. Drifting. Floating. So I am staying at my sister’s. It is not all dark though…I am enjoying spending my days with my niece. She is 16 months and is a total firecracker. She has a lot of my mom’s spirit in her. My sister will have her hands full with that one. One of Isabella’s favorite things to do is dance. It is hilarious. She has “moves” that she does. Elaborate little moves that she does in a sequence. I love it. It is quite a sight. She will dance and her feet will move a hundred miles a minute. Just like Riverdance or Flashdance. Isabella walks into my room and points at the radio on the dresser and makes grabbing gestures with her hand until the music plays. She loves to dance to my mom’s favorite song…Hooked On A Feeling. When it starts with the “ooga chaka, ooga chaka”…her feet burn a hole in the floor. One of my mom’s favorite things to do was watch Isabella dance. She would watch her fancy feet and laugh until she was crying. Today Isabella and I danced a lot. My mom loved to dance. Whenever I had to help my mom move from her bed, she would face me and grab on to my arms and I would have to hold her up by having my arms under hers to support her body since she could not stand by herself. I would tell her when to step and count it out for her. I would make jokes that we were dancing. I used humor a lot to distract her from that fact that she was dying and unable to do simple things such walk or even stand by herself. Once while we repeated this routine after a thousand and one times she looked at me and said “I would give anything to be able to dance one last time.” My mom was never able to dance again. So today Isabella and I danced for my mom to her favorite song. I hope she was watching.

There it is…seven days…one week since her wake. Tomorrow marks one week since her funeral. The clock ticks, the heart beats, the sun rises, the sun sets. 11 days since she died. I feel old. I feel so much older than I did just 12 days ago.