My new job sees me arriving at work shortly after 6 AM, and my interior clock adjusted itself accordingly. Most times I wake up at 3 in the morning, bleary-eyed but unable to sleep, looking for something to do.
This morning I filled the gap by watching an episode from a Columbo set I'd bought recently. These were TV movies from the late eighties, not part of the original series. I'd never seen any of these episodes before, though they used to run constantly on various cable channels, where my mother had seen them over and over, always asking me why I'd never watched them.
Maybe because it was so early, my brain still slept. After watching, I made a mental note to call Mom later to discuss this particular episode. Then I got dressed, brushed my teeth, blissfully unaware. Then reality dawned: Of course I can't call Mom.
Ever again.
It's been a long time, a long time, since this has happened, since some wires got crossed somewhere, causing me to forget this most salient fact: Mom is dead.
And for some reason, in a way it hasn't in this terrible year and a half without her, her absence finally struck me, and a profound sense of loneliness battered me.
It persisted all day. Weekends are pretty slow at the hospital where I work, at least in my department, and I was all by myself today, with nothing to do all morning.
Which was good, in a way, because it gave me time to escape to the storage area on the top floor, a dark, lonely, windowless place. Surrounded by obsolete equipment and broken beds, the tears finally arrived, my body wracked by uncontrollable sobs, the reaction I've managed to avoid until now.
It's easy, in a way, to come to terms with our own mortality; we can accept what happens to us. It's the others, the people we love who are suddenly gone, upending our lives forever, this is what hurts the most. It reminds us how little control we have over our lives, that we are, above all, helpless.
In honor of this mood, here's k d lang performing a beautiful version of a great Neil Young song:
