Don't know why it hits so much harder than others sometimes. There doesn't seem to be a consistent catalyst. But I know this. It’s been more than five years now since you left us; since you left me. Objectively speaking, I should be at the point where I can think of you lovingly, with soft, warm, sepia edges. Like the slightly blurred, forgiving images taken at aging movie star photo shoots. Remembering all the joyous, pretty things without heart stabbing grief. I should have fixed the highly edited memorial to your memory solidly in my brain by now. But that's not happening. When I think of you, I think of lost beauty, boundless potential unrealized, an image of you hanging, all the life of you I'll never see, and it invariably makes me sad. It always hurts; sometimes more than others. And the occasional reduction in pain is the only relief to expect it seems. These times occur when you're shoved to the back of my mind by current, relatively trivial experiences or events. A meaningless job that, more than anything, is testament to my professional failure; the silly spectator sport of political gamesmanship watched on the evening news from my bed; previously recorded episodes of House; These are my distractions. But in the larger landscape of life, how much can any of this matter?
You are gone from my sight forever, and there really is nothing else matching that fact, good, bad or indifferent. My intermittent distractions from this knowing are apparently as good as it's going to get for me from now on. And I have to say, this is getting really old, and it’s extremely exhausting. If I’m tired of me, I can only imagine how boring this must be for everyone I deal with. Don't know how much longer I can do this. But one thing I'm pretty sure of is, I don't think I want to.
Forever,
Your Mother
