Reality

The kids and I are driving up to Washington tomorrow. I've never not wanted to go and right now I can't even explain how much I don't want to go. I think it's because every time I go back it makes it more real. The reality that she won't be there to greet us when we park in the driveway. My step-dad is going to be in Pullman for the WSU homecoming game so he won't be there when we get there. Maybe that's better. Maybe I can still just pretend that she's at the store, which is what my subconscious has kind of been doing ever since it happened.

I'm going home to do a job. Her things need to be gone through and her rooms cleared out. To make room I guess. Room for what? For who? Why does her space need to be filled up so soon? I guess if it were my house, I would probably leave her room the way it is forever. Or at least a long time. I guess I'm just not ready because I feel that when her stuff is all gone, then she'll be gone too. There won't be any place I can go and smell her, or see her things, just as she left them. I mean, why am I even going? It's not like I can fit into her clothes anyways. I don't want them. But I do. I want to take all of them so that they won't get scattered to the wind. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe if it were up to me I wouldn't have let them harvest her organs because I wanted to keep her whole. We just watched Snow White the other day and I think if I could have I would have stolen her away and put her in a glass coffin because she was that beautiful to me.

It makes me so mad. That she's gone, that "she wouldn't have wanted" to have a headstone for me to cry over. Well I want a headstone. Since all of her things are being packed or given away, I want a place to go to think of her, to cry over her, and to show my kids. I don't care what "she wouldn't have wanted". She never told me these things. That's me being selfish again. I feel like I'm losing her all over again when I think about it. So I don't. But this trip home is forcing me to think about it. To dream about it when I don't want to. I don't want to go home. I'm not ready to end this chapter in my life. The chapter on my mother. But everyone else seems to be ready, and so tomorrow morning I'll pack the kids up in the van and head home.