'i predict, by 3am…'

it is almost the end of the third in the triple crown of touchy days for me - my mother's birthday, the day of her death, and mother's day. a day of school was distracting and welcome, but once home i just descended completely. sleep was again the route for avoidance, and i felt so crabby when my dad didn't really address the day when we talked, and my sister made no mention of the date when she emailed. it's an elephant in the room.

what people don't tell you is that when you lose someone you love, while it always hovers above your head and in your heart somewhere, every now and then the knowledge that they are gone seems so fresh and new that it's a punch in the stomach and you're gasping for breath and dealing with it all over again. i sometimes think this feeling will never stop, that one day when i am 75 years old i will be tottering across a street, decrepid and wrinkled, and i will all of a sudden be struck with the feeling and i will be reduced to tears over something that happened sixty years ago. i guess it's just like that.

mommy, as i miss you always and today especially. i wish i could try to bake you a cake as good as the ones you always made me, buy you presents and pick lillies of the valley for you with daddy. i wish i could crawl into your bed in the morning like a little girl, singing the birthday song and squeezing you in a bear hug, inhaling your scent - nivea face cream and tosca perfume and something else that was just you.

i'll crawl into bed tonight and clutch your quilt, trying to fool myself into thinking i can still catch a wisp of your scent and pretending for a just a moment that you are still here, just maybe over in another room and i just can't see you right now.