I’m not sure any of this will even make sense. I just feel like my feelings need a space and time to exist in. Maybe if they’re here, they won’t take up so much space in me anymore.

My mother died over the summer. It wasn’t unexpected, she was in her 80s but it wasn’t expected either. She was sleeping too much and was taken to the hospital. There we discovered she had a heart attack. She wasn’t eating and was deteriorating. She was taken to a care home, where she lived out the rest of her days. On a Sunday morning I got the call that she died.

I went to the care home to look at her body. Thinking it might make me feel some sort of closure. It was the worst experience of my entire life. She was just laying there, looking white and lifeless. I stared at her for too long. I tried to hug her. When I did she was cold and it put a lonely coldness in my body I still can’t shake.

I stood in the hallway while they got her body ready and watched her leave the room for the last time. I crumpled into a little ball and cried for the rest of the day.

I had nightmares for the rest of the week. I’ve never been a big believer in the afterlife but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in hell. Not a biblical hell, just like a scary place. A confusing place, a limboish place. I had nightmares of just images of her tumbling into a fun house version of a black hole. It was so loud, but all the noise was just collective voices talking. I felt like I was watching and feeling her at the same time and I was being collapsed upon by pressure, but also exploding from the outside in. I guess this is just the way I was processing such an engulfing loss.

I went to sleep crying. I woke up crying. I moved around life crying for months. I couldn’t even get out of bed if I wanted to. I feel so alone now. Like I’ve never been so sad and alone. I’ve never needed people so badly and looked around and no one is there. I literally have no one to call that will get it. No one even to spend time with me that doesn’t. I’ve become angry, just in general.

You can skip this part. It’s just me being unreasonably angry.

Mad at people over the age of 30-35 having babies. Do you know what you’re doing to those poor sweet babies? You’re setting them up to be me. To lose their mom when they need her most. To leave your grandkids before they’re ready. To leave your baby when they have a mountain of responsibility and they can’t just grieve. No one thinks about that when they become an old mom. What happens years down the line in those babies lives. I definitely do now. It makes me mad and sad for them. I’m not comfortable with this feeling it’s just one that’s currently living in me.

I’m mad at people that are awful, and in that anger I’ve become one of them. Just grossed out by the way everyone behaves. Don’t you know life is short? Don’t you know nothing really matters. So hug your babies, all your mom, be nice to the lady in the check out line. I mean how hard is that? Impossible apparently if you go outside and look around. Everyone has their own challenges. You never know what kind of things they’re carrying, so you can’t really judge. I could shake myself and say the same thing. None of it really matters anymore I just feel like I’m waiting for the end.

Which is so stupid. She lived without her parents for so long, and her sisters, and all kinds of people she loved. She lived happily without them, that’s how I got so many years with her. But I’m out in her position and I’m going to collapse as a human? That’s nuts. As stupid and nuts as it is, it’s still happening and I hate everything about it and myself now.

I don’t even know why I’m angry. We had so many lovely years together. I have no regrets, we didn’t fight, I loved her so much. Nothing was left unsaid. I really don’t have anything to be mad about. Grief is a process I guess.

Now I just feel really alone. I would be really happy if someone with no life just spent every second with me. I don’t want to be left alone. I don’t know if I’m sad, or scared or what, but I know I don’t want to be alone at all. I also know I’m being kind of insufferable, I don’t expect anyone to be around me.

Thank you for listening. This is all I could get through before my eyes got blurry with tears and my head started to pound. I hope I can write out the rest later.