Making friends, making plans, writing stories, walking and riding and laughing, trying. It has been a hard week for me and mine. Two years on Sunday, two long short horrible normal years. Sitting in class I found myself remembering what I was doing two years ago, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Driving with Aunt Lynne to San Jose looking for a flower designer--hydrangeas, green and rose-studded in tall glass vases. Sitting at a round table at Chapel of the Angels, barely barely keeping it together until I broke and went to the parking lot. Buying plants at the nursery in Santa Cruz, gently prodding the dangling fuschias, phone to my ear as my mother told me that she had died instantaneously. Staying up nights, later and later, pasting photos of her face to cardboard for the memorial service.
I didn't think about any of this last year. Last year was all about the day of it, the day she died, and the drive and the clouds and Colby on the phone and sitting in the living room with my parents, in the room none of us ever used. This year was all about the days after, the days between October 3 and the day of the memorial service, the following Saturday. The convoy to San Francisco to pick up her car. The phone calls to her friends. The arrival of my relatives. The food, the wonderful bizarre food delivered to our doorstep and often left. Lasagnas and apple tatine and more bagels than I had ever seen in one place. And the plants, the flowers, lining every surface of our house. We ran out of vases, room.
Last year my parents came to Homagin and we huddled together, our little family. This year they went to Tahoe and I stayed here. My father asked if I was going to be okay and I said, What's the worst that can happen? I'll be sad. I find myself saying that a lot these days, in all sorts of situations. What's the worst that can happen?
