Alrighty then, I lost my mind for a moment there, working on getting it back. I wish I could just hold my stability for enough time for me to make some progress, half my problem is feeling like I’m going nowhere…
Problem is, when you can’t see a goddamned thing in front of you, it’s hard to know there is anything out there at all… right?
But sometimes… if you focus clearly enough on that black curtain, you can see little holes of light poking through, and if you just focus on those…. I’ve learned they get bigger… and then there are more of them, till they all connect and the black curtain is gone, and then you’re blinded by the light… and are plunged into darkness again.
I guess the key is to keep yer shades on.
*****
It’s amazing how many people are sooooo lonely this time of year. I suppose you head into fall, and arrange things for your winter hibernation. That time where we all incubate and come out full force in spring…
Some people are more lonely than others, I mean, I’ve sat in a room full of people whose lives I am the focus of, and felt so singularly alone I could be invisible. Realizing one’s own presence… ha.
Or one’s lack of presence.
I’m feeling particularly pained this year, and I’ve had some trouble pinning down why… aside from the frustration that I feel I’ve lived this moment and these circumstances before, everyone keeps pointing out the one thing that’s different. My mother isn’t here.
I feel I’d rather forget that she’s not here, and remember that she very much is. I can sense her, as long as I don’t miss her. She’s told me so.
I don’t have her body here to stimulate mine the way she used to. All I have left of her is what’s in my mind, but …
There have been some interesting occurences since her departure. Of particular note are the problems everyone seemed to be having with their phones around the time of her departure, and my father (for the first time ever in his life) did not receive his credit card statement the month following her death. Leave it to my mother to a) figure out how to use the phone in the hereafter, and b) how to use a credit card there too.
It’s been hard to feel her at all the last little bit… I still seek her out in my thoughts but there is more of me than there is of her in there, and it’s just not as flavorful as the real thing. It’s hard to re-create the past in any kind of living color… unless you preserve it.
Last night I received a phone call… a wonderful phone call, from a voice I haven’t heard in a while, whose voice is the closest thing on earth that I will ever find that is anywhere close to hers. Whose brain has more knowledge of her that I don’t know so that I can keep getting to know her, someone who cares for me the way she would have… if she were here in body.
During this phone call, at a particularly poignant moment, the phone started screwing up… just like right after my mom died. It was intense…. and I could feel her there as if she enveloped my whole heart, filled it right up to the brim, and I let it… I let myself believe that my mother was on the phone, right there, listening in and trying her damndest, with whatever she has now (I mean, how do you operate without a body right? I suppose purely on thought…) to help me realize her presence. By materializing herself. She filled me up completely, and I could feel it.
That the facts of the matter are purely inconsequential. I know it could have been crossed wires. Some handyman somehwere tinkering with things he shouldn’t…. but why would I deprive myself of a delusion that makes me feel so good… so strong…. and LOVED?
I looked up at Kevin, who had heard me trying to communicate through the static, and he believed as I believed without me saying a word. We were both moved to joyful tears.
Ahhh… the power of thought.