warning: this is harsh

i wrote this tonight in response to a sweet friend asking me why i couldn't fall in love over the past four months.  the answer came as a release that needed to happen...for me...after my january 10th posting...and it happened hard...harder than ever before...tonight:

((january 3rd was the last time i got to talk to her in person -- in the hospital, after her blood clot to the brain -- with promises we would talk later, about what she wanted to share with us so we could remember her the way SHE wanted us to.  november 24th was the first time i really talked to her in 8 months, to hear of the fatal prognosis and her forthcoming battle.)) 

january 8th i get a horrible call at 4:30 in the morning saying that my mom is in critical condition.  i haul ass to long island.  i heard on the way that she got better.  yet i arrived to the hospital around 1pm to find tubes in her everywhere - EVERYWHERE - and she was drugged subconscious.  i could see she wanted to struggle into consciousness...if not just to say goodbye...for good...or maybe say she was scared...or maybe to say she was going to peace...or that she loved me.  but she couldn't say anything - those fucking tubes.   then i watched her every day thereafter get quieter and quieter -- even though the tubes and drugs made it seem like she was alive and just quite possibly improving.  it's amazing what we can hold on to when we really want to.  her body was doing strange things...changing for death, yet being forced to live.    January 11 at 1pm we pulled the tubes and the medicine.  at 5pm, my mom's heart stopped.  3 months exactly after her 66th birthday.  2 months - ONLY 2 months after she was diagnosed with cancer.  about a month after she started her chemo treatments that promised to let her be with us for FIVE. MORE. years.  January 16th was her funeral.  january 20th i drove to rochester. january 23rd my boss was being an asshole and i was fretting i wouldn't have a job when i returned from my mother's memorial.  january 27th i drove to long island. January 29th was my mom's memorial.  february 5th i return to rochester.  february 18 was the bout.  february 25th my car was totaled, my dog was injured, i was injured - i just wanted to buy lemons for my sister's birthday present.  huh.  february 28th was my sister's birthday, the first family holiday without my mom.  my sister was so sad.  i was sadder...for my sister.  february 29th i quit my job. march 2nd and 3rd i said goodbye to my car of 17 years...my foundation, my friend, my gyrl who carried me to my mother's death and back.  my car who had the perfect shelf on the back where ramona would lie even though she wasn't 5 months old anymore and could now barely fit (at 70 lbs).  but that spot was hers.  and that chin rest on the back seat head rest...hers.  that car took me and my first dog and cat, now both dead, here in rochester, across the united states for the first of many times...in the sweltering summer...through the south.
march 8th i drove to long island, in good company.  march 12...or 13th (timeline is getting fuzzy here) i drove back to rochester.  march 24th was a bout. march 25th was a scrimmage i wasn't allowed to skate in because i wasn't fucking good enough.   it's march 27th and i do not have a job.  my stepfather sits besides himself with grief and responsibility and pretending that everything can stay the same as when my mom was alive.  my mom is dead.  she is not here.  anymore.