I dreamt about my mother last night. I haven’t done that since she died. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that — I can’t recall ever dreaming about her, but it’s hard to remember dreams anyway.

I remembered it vividly while I slept, but now all I remember is that I dreamt that she came back from the dead and was sitting at a table with us talking about dying. In the dream, I so heartbroken. I was crying in my sleep and I woke up in the middle of the night crying.

I think it affected my entire day. I wanted to stay isolated, dwelling on my own thoughts. And now, for the first time in many weeks, I feel lonely, like I’m missing something.

The other day I saw a hummingbird on my patio for the first time since I’ve lived here. My plants are doing awesome on the patio and are blooming like crazy right now. Some of the plants I took from my mother’s garden are blooming for the first time since I’ve had them. This weekend, I looked out on the patio and saw a hummingbird in the geraniums. My sister thinks that when a hummingbird visits her, it’s mom. I don’t believe that but because she does, whenever I see one, I think of both her and my mom.

For me, there are multiple types of “writing”. There’s my hardcopy journal, my blog, my fiction, and then long personal emails. And each pulls at me at different times. I think I write in my journal and send personal emails least often, my fiction second, and my blog first. But fiction’s moving on up. I want it to win out over all the others. I dragged myself out of almost sleep last night and this morning to start a new story. Answering the call to write is natural now in a way that hasn’t been for a long time. And it keeps me sane and content and hopeful in a way I haven’t felt in a long time either.

To attend Grandma’s birthday, we were driving on the freeway my mom died on today and it’s a regular drive for my sister, but it’s only the 2nd time I’ve driven it since my mom’s accident over a year and a half ago. As we were driving home, I was watching the side of the road wondering how the hell she drifted off into the dirt shoulder when the asphalt shoulder is so wide, but then it narrows and I imagine that must be where.

In my obsessive post death search for anything related to my mom, I found a callous post on some usenet group about her accident and it made me so upset. Just a couple of days ago, I happened across it again unintentionally and it incited some old anger in me. But it quelled pretty quickly. Death is so commonplace — it’s meaningless unless it’s personal. According to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, over 39,000 people die a year in fatal car accidents in the U.S. (at least back in 2005 and trending upward every year). And according to the CDC, motor vehicle fatalities were only about 0.02% of all fatalities per year in the U.S between 1988-1992 (source: Atlas of United States Mortality), though motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of injury death in the U.S. (between 1979-2004).

At over 2 million deaths a year, that averages out to close to 6000 deaths per day (rounding liberally).

It’s been long enough that I can start weaving the story of her death into my stories. Bits and pieces of that whole experience (most of which I’ve blogged here) will color both the fiction and nonfiction I write for probably the rest of my life. One random death on one day like any other, but this one was my personal death.

It’s been a year and a half now and I realized well after Mother’s Day that I’m not done grieving. And long after I thought I was o.k., I realize I’m not. I still miss her. I finally went to go talk to someone — I told myself I would much earlier, but never got around to it. The weeks before and the weeks after Mother’s Day this year were so bleak and dark that I finally felt myself snap. And I still wasn’t sure it was grief. Just everything else in my life gone wrong.

I’ve never been to a psychologist before and I’m fairly suspect of their efficacy. But I can’t argue the benefit of having someone to talk to that won’t tell anyone else what you’ve told them and that isn’t a part of your normal life. Someone you can share things with that you’ve stopped sharing with your friends and family. Because you’re worried you’ll wear them out, worried of going over the same ground over and over again, and because you don’t even realize that you need to keep covering that ground.

When I called to make my appointment I asked, what do you specialize in?. I figure they must all have something they specialize in. She said she didn’t have a speciality, but dealt mostly with work issues, grief, and life changes. I told her she was perfect and went to see her. I spent half the session talking about my mom and I hadn’t anticipated that. I haven’t told the story of the accident in so long, it was cathartic to retell it and to recall that memory, slightly faded as it was. She told me I should start reading one of the many books I’d bought on grief that I never got around to reading so I started On Grief and Grieving tonight. And the intro is already full of God so I’m skeptical, but it’s also full of dying and that’s cathartic, too.

I got a phone message this week about a car accident my mom was in before her death. And it made me sad and angry. Why do I have to deal with this? Shouldn’t this be over? But I guess life and all its responsibilities go on after death for the rest of us still living.

Death’s been busy in my life lately. I just finished Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince. It made me sob. I recently joined a new writers group and one of our first stories is about the loss of a son. Haven’t had the heart to read it yet. My sister’s fiance’s stepfather just passed away yesterday. I only met him once, but my heart breaks for his wife.

And me — I don’t want to say goodbye. But I know I have to.

Our second mother’s day since her accident. We were at the grave on Saturday and I sat there wondering how much money people spend on flowers for their dead loved ones, how much money have we spent in the last 478 days on flowers for my mother’s grave? And how long are we supposed to keep it up? For the rest of our lives? I don’t begrudge the money (I only rarely am there purchasing the flowers myself), but wonder anyway.

I was at the Korean market 2 weekends ago and I haven’t been in a Korean market in a long time. I sobbed the entire way home. I had foolishly thought that I was over grieving, but that car ride home make me realize how much I still miss having her in my life. And I’ve been thinking about her ever since.

My sister made Josh and I these beautiful picture frames with photos of us with her. Josh showed me his and I started sobbing. It was a picture of her smiling and him so much younger and smaller in front of Burger King. Time slips by too fast: we age, things change in big and small ways and often irreversibly. Josh will never be that small again. My mom will never smile like that again for the camera. Life is a series of heartbreaks and disappointments and sadness. Mixed in with some less morbid stuff that makes those things bearable.

I look at her photo almost every day. The same half smile on her lips, the same almost sad expression in her eyes. Sometimes I ring the hummingbird chimes, tell her photo good morning or good night, touch the things that remind me of her, wear her ring. Sometimes days or weeks go by and I don’t think of her. And other times I can’t stop thinking about her. Sometimes I sob for missing her. But most of the time I’m fine.

It’s mother’s day and I was thinking about my son today and wondering if he worries about me. We were talking about smoking and riding motorcycles this weekend. I don’t want him to do either (not yet with the motorcycle anyway; never with the cigarettes), but I can’t tell him not to. Not when I do both. I wonder if he realizes we want to protect him, and that when we don’t want him to do these things it’s because of our years of experience, not because we want to deny him pleasure. I was thinking tonight that worrying about your child and worrying about your partner are very different things — you can love both unconditionally, but you accept that your partner is an adult and you don’t try to change him. With your child, you want to influence, change, and shape him and wonder how best to do that without taking away his sense of free will. I don’t have a partner right now, and I’m not the most influential person in my son’s life, but I worry about both anyway.

We dropped off Jess at the airport on Saturday and then were driving to Valley Fair Mall — Frank wanted to go to a store in there. I started thinking about my mom in the car right after we dropped off the sis. I was at that mall when my dad called to tell me, about 6 hours after her accident. I remember asking him if he went to see her at the hospital and he was trying to tell me she didn’t make it to the hospital and all I could think was why didn’t she go to the hospital? I thought at first she was just hurt. And how sad that no one visited her. I couldn’t really understand my dad. What was wrong with my mom? Did they really do everything they could? How did they know she didn’t need to go to the hospital? And how come they didn’t call us? How could they not have our contact information? They said it took some time to find my father’s information so for a while my mom was just some body with no identifiable loved ones to claim her.

I remember being mad at Frank for not coming out to get me. I had to call my dad back because I couldn’t hear him when he first called me but knew enough to be scared. I ran outside to call him back. I was out there for so long, I thought for sure Frank would come get me. I didn’t want to go back in so wet and sad. But he didn’t come out and I was mad cause I needed him, but I knew he was just respecting my privacy.

I went home and tore through everything looking for photos of her. I listened to her New Year’s Eve message over and over again. I found these stamps she’d given me with her handwriting on the package. I missed her so much I didn’t know what it would do to me. And now, it seems so far away. But every now and again, I pull it close. Cause I don’t want to let her go.

i accomplished less than i wanted to over my leave, but it was good time off and away. i tried to not pressure myself to do anything and succeeded. i got started on two out of the three things i wanted to do over leave, but got much less cleaned up at my mom’s than i wanted to. actually, i felt like i pretty much left the house the way it was when i first got there.

i think the time with my sister was good. talking about my mom, seeing my dad, talking about my dad with my sister. all those things were good. i was starting to feel all shut up about my mom, not really talking about her and feeling like i needed to, but not sure with who or how, and feeling really sad and hurt and bottling it all up. my leave came just in time. i got to see my sister just in time for me not to get all crazy. and now i feel ok. i still miss my mom. i still think about her a lot, i still cry whenever i think about the accident, but i think about the accident less and less frequently.

my father’s really sort of come out of his shell lately. he called me the other day just to chat. my father has never done that in my entire life. i was touched. he talks more than he ever has. he’s very open. and seeing this side of him, i think about my sister and i and how much she’s like my mother and how much i’m like my father. i’m also my mother and jess is also very much my father, but there’s tighter coupling the other way around. and i think it’s interesting. i want my father to be happy. sometimes i think my mom’s death opened up new things for all of us. and closed some other things down.

I was emailing a friend of mine the other day and he told me to appreciate the fact that I’d had my mom for as long as I did. And I thought to myself, it wasn’t nearly long enough. But his mother committed suicide when he was just a few years old and I felt like an insensitive whiner for going on and on about my mom. Another good friend of mine lost his mom at a very young age, too, and for some reason when I lost my mom, I forgot all about these other folks who’ve lost their moms, too.

I was lucky to have her for as long as I did. I wish I’d known her better; I always thought I eventually would, but I took it for granted. Just like I took for granted having my mom at all. The rawness of the loss has healed over a bit. And even going through and organizing her things isn’t so difficult and I manage to do a little every day, but every now and again I find something that feels so intimate and revealing and it takes my breath away. Yesterday it was a wooden box full of quarters she collected and I pictured her putting quarters into it and it breathed life into her in my imagination. It’s probably the hardest thing now — imagining her doing very specific things and feeling her living in my head for a moment. But it’s a nice thing, too.

I couldn’t get on as well as I have if it weren’t for my sister. I think about her all the time. I mean I’m living with her, too, but I worry and think about her all the time anyway. I think about how sweet and generous she can be and what a rotten sister I’ve been. She sent me this photo the other day:

Mom. Korea.

I don’t know who all those children are, but she looks so young and has the most beautiful smile in this photo. I worry about my sister living here all alone when I leave. But hopefully that won’t be for at least a little while, so I’ll worry about it then.

I still feel like hell. I’m so conjested that sometimes my head feels like it’s in a vise. Just turning or nodding my head hurts. I worked today for a little bit, but didn’t make it much past 2pm. Then I slept until dinner time. And I’m ready for sleep yet again.