Insomnia

I'm sitting here at my mother's computer and it's 3:30 in the morning. I can't sleep. I feel like I'll never sleep again. I keep looking over at the couch because ordinarily, if I was sitting here on the computer in the middle of the night, she'd be asleep on the couch by the window with a couple of her dogs.

I do pretty good for awhile and then I fall apart for a little bit. I've cried so much that at one point, I couldn't produce tears anymore. I sat there with my face scrunched up, making crying noises but producing no waterworks.

Poor Mike has had the worst of it. He's been very solid and stoic thusfar and I know he feels so bad for me. He was with me when I found out she had died. He followed me around when I decided that I couldn't be in the house anymore and he was the one who held me while I literally screamed at him, "No! I can't go through this again! This isn't happening! I want my mom! Make it stop! I WANT MY MOM!"

The worst bit tonight was when I was looking through some pictures that my mom has tucked away in one of her desk drawers. There are so many cute pictures of us as kids, my cousins, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. It was fun. I was laughing at this picture of my mom holding my baby brother...and he really was a baby at this point, maybe a year old. In the picture she's grinning, bent over partway with Matty in her arms while he giggles and grabs ahold of her father (my grandpa Parker's) hair. My grandpa has this really funny look on his face. It's a great picture. Then, even as I laughed at it, I suddenly had this bone-chilling thought. "Everyone in this picture is dead." My laughter died and I was suddenly bawling like a two year old again.

I thought to myself today, "Y'know, people go through this every day." I mean, I'm certainly not the only person in the world to lose a parent. Not even the only one to lose one on Friday. People deal with this every day but, Oh dear God, I don't know how they survive. I mean, I know I will. As my mother always says, "Remember, 'This too, shall pass.'" And so it will.

But who's going to help me solve all my problems? Who's going to buy useless little trinkets and give them to me when I visit? Who's going to buy me Angel Cheeks figurines and Willow Tree Angels that I've run out of room for? Who's going to listen to me complain, give me advice and always say, "You know, Lucinda, these things have a way of working themselves out."? Who?

I'm so lost.