Ten years

Diary, Sept. 12, 1996

While Dad and P. stayed overnight at the hospital, L. slept at the house, where J. and I were. I was having a probably nonsensical dream at about 3:45 A.M. when Dad called. Mom had just died. Sighed a few times, then stopped breathing. L. drove us over to the hospital, and I cried a bit. Mom was still in the room, which was dimly lit, and Dad was playing a tape of gentle piano music. We sat and stood around, talked about and to Mom, cried, hugged each other. I'd become acclimatised to the inevitability of this, but it is a quite different feeling now. I got about an hour more sleep, then L. drove me back to UBC.

And here, I had two hours of 250, in the tutorial we were talking at points about different conceptions of time (some without past or future) and the ability to adjust to the idea of death and live comfortably alongside it. Not exactly why I came back and went to my classes today. ... I next ate lunch in the Place Vanier caf before a Geography lab led by a T.A. named R. I sharpened up my rusty graphing skills with the help of the girl next to me (X., a 4th-year Chem major...).

I have to say that it was really weird ('weird' being a dumb word) to see Mom lying there after she had died. It helped to finalize things for me, but it was as if Mom were simultaneously there and not there. I could accept that Mom was dead, but the body was not Mom. At one point I wondered to myself, Are there 5 people in the room, or 6? A few questions have kept rattling around in my head. I wouldn't say I grapple with them; it's more like they are grappling with me. The first is, Why? But I think I know that there is no reason. Another is, Where are you? I refuse to accept the simple, cold scientific explanation, or even some reassuring psychological explanation like "She will always be a part of who we are" (although I believe something along those lines is true). And a third question rises from the second one: (When and where) Will I ever see you again? Because I miss her. I miss her so much. It's too much to bear, saying that I'll never meet Mom again. I have to believe that I will.