Flat

Lately I haven’t felt like writing very much. I haven’t felt depressed, I’ve just felt kind of flat. Many peripheral thoughts are going through my head with no central focus. The federal government may be shutting down Monday. That means waiting and waiting to be unfurloughed and recalled to work. We will be okay, I’m not worried, it’s just annoying not to be able to predict the end date.

Today is the second anniversary of my mother’s death. Like Sarah, she woke up dead in the morning. I guess I sound very cavalier. I remember that on that day I was going to meet a friend for lunch and my father called me. He told me that my mother had “succumbed” and that “her long ordeal was over.” I knew he meant she had died, but I couldn’t help picturing her clinging to a piece of timber at sea, sort of like Jack clinging to Rose’s wooden plank in Titanic. And gradually losing her grip and succumbing and falling beneath the waves.

Can you love someone and still feel relieved when they die? I think that’s how I felt when my mother died. She had so many illnesses, and communicating her symptoms had become the primary manifestation of her illnesses. It was exhausting for the family. I felt there was nothing I could do right. She didn’t take pleasure in anything.

It’s a cold morning. I was looking at travel websites for flights to Italy, thinking about planning the next trip for Max and me. We could go in the early spring, the same time of year we went to the UK. Or we could go during the holidays, try to lift the holiday gloom. Things are better than this time last year. I have to keep telling myself that.