Missing Her Mom

She falls apart and I feel helpless to help her. Watching as she tries to hide her tears and suffer through a movie too good not to like, but too hard to watch when the subject matter has literally hit too close to home.

I understand her distance. The safety of pretending not to need anyone or anything when everything is just too much, too hard to comprehend. There is no getting around the finality of death. And you can't help but remember every moment of the last moment. A family holding hands, ushering life to death with love, trying so hard to let her go in the sudden recognition of everything they were losing, unable to know just how hard the coming months would be.

Everything is a reminder of what is not where it should be, of who is missing. An equation that refuses to measure up. A conversation you begin and end when you realize you are standing there in an empty room speaking to yourself and waiting for a reply.

It is emptiness longing to be filled.

She turns to me and I feel I must apologize for allowing sadness to find her on a Friday night. She shakes her head, mumbles it's okay and readies herself for the drive she has to go back to home.

I worry about her. My youngest sister. Holding so much in, keeping so much to herself. Inside an emotional tsunami getting ready to let go.