It’s been over two weeks.
Though rhythms and routines of ordinary life demand energy and focus, I swim against an undertow. I am achingly, sadly haunted. How does one live without one’s mother?
I walk through Grand Central, notice myself looking at the floor flow by as I’m striding, and suddenly my chest seizes. Never, never, never, never, never: maybe the bleakest line ever written. It now sounds in my mind--Lear’s unbearable words on discovering his daughter Cordelia dead.
I try to remind myself that my mother’s death at 91 is no tragedy. In many ways, it’s something to celebrate: she lived so long and so well, she had love in her life, her death was anticipated. I know this and still, the iron finality of it takes my breath away and just I want my mother. I grant myself a single “never.”
