time warp

Can it really be that long since I posted here? Time feels like an elastic band, alternately stretching out and suddenly shortening with a snap. Some days it feels as though it's been months since things began happening and on others it seems like yesterday.

Perhaps it's more the fact that everything related to my mother's death happened at a distance. I found this to be the case when my dad died over a decade ago. My parents and I lived in different states and it was easy to imagine that it hadn't happened...that nothing had changed. Nothing associated with his -- and now her -- death seemed permanent or real because my life here looked the same.

However when Sunday afternoon rolls around now it's quieter because the weekly phone call won't be happening. Of all times so far, that's the day when the reality of it all sinks in...that and when I want to e-mail my mom to just check in or rattle on a bit about my own day. Even my inbox is emptier.

Not to say that I'm not back in the land of the living, so to speak, but in the quiet moments or when something that was routine only weeks ago is simply no longer that, I feel that emptiness that people talk about. It's a physical pang down in my belly where my grief and sadness reside. There is a space (in time, in my heart, in the world) that she inhabited that is now profoundly empty. Correction: in all but my heart -- that's busy missing her.

Next week, coincidentally, I'll be joining the community of the Summer Institute at Mount Ida College. The National Center for Death Education hosts a roster of experts each year for five days of personal and professional development and continuing education. There will be a place for me there among those who deeply understand. Not that others don't, but there will more listeners there. Those who work with issues of grief, loss, change and transition are no more immune to those realities than anyone else, but are sometimes more willing to simply sit rather than offer solicitous advice. It's an unusually comforting place to be and in good company.