A Mother Is A Story

Suddenly It Was Fall, The Season Of Death, The Anniversary Of Things-going-to-hell.

I Think That Grief Is A Profound Spiritual, Metaphysical, And - Oddly - Physical Reckoning With Death, Which We Don't Understand Well. It's Both The Process By Which You Relearn The World In The Absence Of Someone Who Was A Pillar In It, And The Process In Which You Confront The Reality Of Death.

I Was Not Raised With Religion, And I Had No Faith Before My Mother Died. On The Other Hand, When She Died, I Did Not Immediately Feel She Was "gone." I Don't Believe She Is In Something Like Heaven, But I Also Feel That We Don't Understand Much About The Nature Of The Universe. So I Hold On To That Uncertainty, At Times.

Loss Is So Paradoxical: It Is At Once Enormous And Tiny.

One Word I Had Throughout The First Year And A Half Of My Mother's Death Was 'unmoored.' I Felt That I Had No Anchor, That I Had No Home In The World.