Mountains

Dear Mum,

It's 12:59 p.m., July 20th, 2026 (yup, I'm keeping track) and you know what I've just realized?

Every day's the same.

That's how it is now. 

I don't want to say what I'm thinking but...

Some days it feels like I'm just holding on til I can get to Jersey and Fred and Jewel and Charmaine and...

Home.

Losing Daddy and Lorenzo were each awful in their own ways (obviously) but this?

Getting up every goddamn day (I'm sorry, Mum, but that's how bad this is) and...

I am so blessed, but...

I LOVE my life, my DAUGHTER, my family. my home, my job but...

I feel hollow without you.

I FEEL the loss every day.

It is not unrelenting and it waivers in intensity but I've felt it every single day since you've been gone. 

I've tried to use the term "transitioned" in lieu of "died", but that feels oh so terribly disingenuous here. 

So limited in scope.

You died the way you existed for me.

Your presence (through absence) overtakes everything else.

I don't know who I am without you.

I know I'm a mother first and foremost, a sister and auntie next.

Those are the most important jobs and I suppose this is enough to know for now.

I really didn't want to write today. I had to force myself not to do the SINKFUL of dishes that await me after I finish this entry but...

Writing's always going to be how I choose to get through life.

It doesn't have to be what I do for a living but it's what I HAVE to do in order to LIVE.

It's always going to be how I make sense of the world.

Getting up, sitting down at my desk, and typing these words is an admission that...

Even though you're gone, I STILL HAVE TO LIVE.

I have to get off the green couch and...

I have to let you go.

I have to find a new purpose. 

I have to find out who I am when I'm not trying to live up to (or rebel against) who you and Daddy wanted me to be.

I have to start living again.

Climb my own mountains as it were.



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