Easter 2023: my worst day ever

Mom died three days ago.

Every minute feels like nails on a chalkboard.

I deleted her profiles at Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ earlier this evening. I just went back to one of them and lost my breath when I didn't see her name.

I guess it's going to be a lot of contradictions now. I want Dad to feel like he has more space and presence here, but everything I create for him takes away from Mom.

Someone is coming to pick up her oxygen condensers tomorrow. I don't have a problem with that, but packing up all her medications for safe disposal? I wept.

Oh, G-d. My mother, my wonderful, patient, sweet mother is dead.

I couldn't stay long after all the monitors in the hospital went flat/zero. She looked less like Mom and more like something -- instead of someone -- every minute.

The first time she was in a hospital and then a nursing facility was seven years ago. I felt like she should be smiled at by at least one person who wasn't getting paid to do it. It was almost always me, but sometimes it was my SIL and nieces or friends from church. Dad never went without me, but it was nice when he came. (Except for Christmas. We couldn't wake her up, and he was so distressed at the sight of her that we got Chinese takeaway, and he got drunk.) The last time she left our little apartment was December 1, 2022. She spent four and a half months of bouncing between hospitals and nursing facilities, getting weaker with each stay. Dad and I visited after work on Friday, smiling and chatting and helping her eat her dinner. Saturday she was unresponsive and moved to the ICU.

On Sunday, Dad and I went to the hospital. The doctor said it was time. She wouldn't get better. She wanted to die at home, so we did our best to bring home to her, telling her we loved her, holding her hands. The nurses disconnected her from the machines that forced her to linger. They started pain medication via IV. There were three people in that ICU room for half an hour, none of us moving in an substantial way, and then there were only two of us. I didn't notice when it happened, but there was a moment when we realized that she had left.

I am grief.

I am antsy.

I know there's so much to do. A funeral to plan, death certificates to obtain and use at various places, the eulogy and obituary to write, people to tell. But I am tired. I don't sleep well at night, and I have too much to do during the day to sleep in or get a nap.

I make it sound so arduous; it's only been three and a half days. I have no idea how to do this.

Sad sad sad sad sad.