Midnight Madness

I thought that growing up my entire life with a chronically ill mother, knowing from an extremely early age that her multiple sclerosis would cause her to have an early death, and then watching her be bedridden for seven years would make the mourning process a lot more reasonable and contained. And, God only knows, I don't know what it would have felt like if my young, healthy mother had died suddenly, so I can't truly compare. But I am shocked at how overwhelmed and under equipped I feel, how much I am "slogging through mud," acting politely like I care about other people around me when I really don't, and being unable to sleep. (I think I should give up trying to sleep and just aim at getting some good reading done.) I wonder how I'd be acting if I didn't have the duties of home and (particularly) children to which to tend. I've told Chris that it's good he was gone all weekend and has had business dinners so far this week because otherwise he'd be eating random, instant sort-of food along with me.

Fourteen days since Mom died and each day has still brought a card in the mail or an email to my computer . . . or, this morning, the first small box of sentimental belongings of hers that I shipped to myself from California. These things are a comfort.

A friend recommended to me C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, which she read after her own mother died. I don't know why I had it on my bookshelf, but I did, and so devoured it in a couple of days. It is most excellent, in that Lewis uses his more eloquent language to capture the crazy that I'm feeling (he calls it "midnight madness"), without using his powerful intellect to reason it away.

Seeing one person dies makes me realize in a way I didn't know (something Lewis writes about extensively) that everyone else in my life will die too. And I'm gripped with panic about that.