The prelude is done

Well, I really didn't mean to let this many days pass without an entry.  It's certainly not that I haven't thought about making one, though I was usually not anywhere near the computer at the time.

I spent my first "normal" weekend without Mom this past weekend.  Normal in this case meant that I wasn't traveling and didn't have anything special planned.  I had hoped that I could get caught up on household chores and at least make things look a little more usual.  As it turned out, that was a vain hope.  I continue to underestimate the effect of grieving and now, depression, on what I can manage to do.  The weekend found me completely adrift and sandbagged by the absence of anything resembling a normal routine.  Mom and I shopped together on the weekend and Saturday night was our night to cook a really good dinner for ourselves if we didn't have other plans.  Also, she would have been watching my alma mater's football game with me this week. Instead, I had an empty weekend where I'd either wander around aimlessly or try to occupy myself with minutiae so I didn't have to face the void Mom left.

I don't think anyone can really understand how very, very lost I am right now.  There have been precious few things or people in my life that have ever been constant, and chiefest of those was my mom.  With her gone now, there is no certainty in my world.  The new constant is that I am utterly alone and scared.  I also fear that people are going to soon be tired of me being sad and depressed; that they'll be telling me to get over it and move on.  I need all the support I can get and I'm bad enough as it is asking for it.  Somehow, I hope people will stick with me.

They say grief is a personal journey for us all.  All I know is that at just under four weeks, mine seems to have just begun.  The shock and immediate pain has faded, but I am left in a featureless nowhere, not knowing where I want to go, let alone how to guide myself there.  The rational part of my brain has accepted that Mom is gone, but my soul is torn and bleeding.