My mom at her Sweet Sixteen

 

At CoRo Cafe

Watching people coding, reading, surfing Facebook. I don't know how to work through the grief right now.

I miss my mom

It's her birthday today. I can't believe I've crossed into the territory of having lost my mom. I know it will get easier, but for right now it sucks.

From Facebook

Landa, you were dealt one of the most difficult hands of cards to play in the history of American high school and came out of it swinging like Voltron. I'm proud to call you a colleague and a friend, and I'd have your back in a zombie apocalypse to my last round of ammo.

Mom Death Poem No. 4

Action, you told me, is the antidote to anxiety. Nice alliteration, I said, ignoring its meaning. Later I found out there is wisdom under just about any rock if you know how to turn it over correctly. But your calls to my house spurred more anxiety than action. They put me in the fetal position, dotted my palms with sweat. I always worried that what has happened would happen: something could go wrong, you could be sick or – God forbid – dying. Today you are dying and you say nothing to me because you are basically in a coma, catatonic, can’t talk. How’s that for alliteration? I think, bending over you, playing John Denver on my phone. You used to hold me while this song spun itself out on the record player: Thank God I’m a country boy! Yee-ah! In the movies this would wake you up and you would tell me something else profound before ducking back into the Great Darkness. This is not the movies.

My mom died yesterday

Anything else you want to know? 

So true

One of my students wrote this to me:

Grief is a two-faced bitch that shows up at your doorstep when you're in the middle of dinner, pulls up a chair, and overstays her welcome.  

Smart woman. It's so true. I'm with my mother right now. She's gone. She's 97 percent gone. There's so little left, even of her body. It's eating itself alive. She's dying from complications of dementia. I haven't talked about it because what was there to talk about? Why did I want to tell you?

Why did I want to tell myself?