We'll Make It

Well, last night was nothing short of a miracle. 

I went shopping for the food for my mother's funeral, somehow managing to not be brought to my knees by the lamentful aching supermarket elevator music, the kind that's all slowly swelling strings that seem to stretch on forever. As if that wasn't enough, I already could barely see out of my teary eyes because everything on the shelves had me saying "My mother loved watermelon. My mother loved caramels. My mother loved chocolate cake," when I kept running into everyone I know asking me, "How is your mother?" 

But I did it, I got it all done, and only the sheer determination of pulling together a party for my mother of cake and ice cream and pink roses that she will never forget, pulled me through.

And today, we have my mother's funeral. I'll be delivering the eulogy. My oldest boy will be doing the first reading, and my middle boy and littlest will bring up the offerings.

This week has been a mad rush of planning activity, and society's rituals keep you distracted in the days so immediate after a death, that you have a bit of a period of putting off the inevitable -- that of seeing what life is like without them.

I know my family and I will make it through tomorrow's service, and the reception afterward, where people will tell us a bit about our mother, share their stories, while we smile and say Thank You. 

That'll be the easy part. It's in the days that will follow, after our frenzied pace has passed, that we'll feel ourselves bone weary and looking at the thousands of steps before us that we now have to take, without them.

 

 
 *So many heartfelt thanks to all of you, for your kind messages, emails, phone calls, cards, FB check-ins, and beautiful tweets. You have become my community, my support. And I am grateful. xo
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