Anyway, nevermind

It’s funny how quickly things come to a close. I said this to my father, oh I don’t know, maybe ten years ago? “It lasts a long time while you’re going through it, then it’s over.” We were hiking up a hill with brambles and briars: we were sweaty and trudging and definitely not in the least lost, and it was promising to be a brutally challenging walk for these two city slickers unaccustomed to the ways of the wilderness. But I said that it only seemed to be taking a long time because we were going through it: in the end, it would be quick to look back in memory. I guess it’s true what they say: the years start coming and they don’t stop coming.

I don’t want to talk about my mother more, but I still miss her. It’s almost the yahrzeit: it’s been eleven months already. The three nights she was in the hospital between her stroke and her death were the longest of my life, and they’re almost a year in the past. I suppose that’s how mourning works: you just feel it less and less as it gets further and further away. As time’s thread wends its way… or something like that. I don’t have the energy right now to write poetically or beautifully. I just want to speak my mind.

It’s a beautiful day in Evanston. I’m here teaching at computer camp, the same camp I went to. I expected that this summer I’d be having dinner with my mother a lot. That she would come pick me up at the campus after work and we’d go have a glass of wine and dinner somewhere. That we’d get to speak about her and about me and about our lives and interests and that god I would like to simply see her face again but one last time wouldn’t be enough: because it too would just be a moment that would slip by and then be over.