It’s been almost 2 months since mom died.
  People ask me how I am doing.
  I guess I am doing fine – normal grief?
  It’s the weirdest life vacuum I can’t explain
when I stop and think she’s gone.
  Forever.  I am
not really that sad much anymore – just kind of empty in some places.

It takes some intentionality to remember her the way I want
to.
  I still see her in that hospital bed
in the living room – struggling to breath, hanging onto the last moments with her
family.
  I still smell the lotion we used
to bath her each day.
  I still hear the
music we played at her bedside – instrumental hymns that played over and over
while the CD spun in the player.
  I want
to remember her voice and her cooking and her cards on special days.
  I want to remember making her laugh and watching
her mannerisms – the furrowed brow as she listened to me tell a story, the
smiles, and the tongue clicking of disgust when things didn't go her way.

Marcia was cleaning by my side of the bed and she found last
year’s Christmas present to me from mom.
 
A crisp $100 bill in a card she signed with clean even strokes so
different from her writing in those last days.
 
I went out and bought a shirt and shoes and jeans with the money.
  It’s weird to think she gave those things to
me even after she was gone.
  The shoes
feel different on my feet somehow – kind of special and important.
  I don’t really want to wash the shirt – I don’t
want it to fade with my memories.
  I keep
hanging it back in the closet after I wear it.

So each day the memories sift and settle into something
distant – like a dream you remember but can’t explain.