7:11 a.m.

I can’t think very straight it seems, can’t think of what to make for supper or get myself organized. Figured just DO something so made a marinated macaroni salad — my attempt at doing something for someone else rather than walking around like a zombie, which is what I did yesterday — I thought I’d make this so Scott would have something to eat for supper. Then we went and bought a take-out pizza anyway, and sat in front of the TV to eat it and swill rootbeer while watching Mambo Italiano, which I found quite funny.

Movies are good, they take my mind off things. Scott had made a bed on the livingroom floor the night before, where we fell asleep easily. Last night I had to take one of the mild sedatives the doc gave me, because though I was tired, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept feeling that empty fear you feel when you think about how we’re all destined to die in possibly some horrible way, and to lose people we care about in horrible ways, and for the moment that knowledge obliterates all the beauty and love there is in our lives. They seem to be only pretty pictures to help us forget about the ugly reality.

I have been observing the thoughts I am having that make me cry. They are almost inevitably the ones where I am imagining some scene that has never happened, that I think could happen. Being picked up at the Kelowna airport and taking Dad’s hand, for instance — it probably won’t happen, but I cry to think of it. Myself watching Coronation Street, a show Mom turned me onto and watches faithfully, knowing that Mom is not watching it too, some day. Imagining Mom weighing 90 pounds and unable to get out of bed, or calling out in pain. These things are not happening now, and may or may not happen, but thoughts like them sink me into turmoil.

This is pain I am putting myself through for naught. It is caused by the kind of thinking I am trying to get under control — thinking about events and moments of an imagined future, rather than the reality of here and now. I know better than to do this, but I do it anyway. It's unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering.

Then there is the incredulity that this can be happening to our sweet Mom and hence to our family. It is as if it is our first tragedy. We’ve lost grandparents, and that hurt like hell, but there was at least a sense to it because of their ages. It was easier to accept and they didn’t suffer long illnesses. Except for Grandma Johnson, of course, who died unexpectedly from heart failure at age 47 and shocked the whole town. I was only six or so, so I escaped that pain. Now though, there is a sense of impending doom and irreparable loss.

My face and arms seem to be mending. My eyes are still buried in the centre of brown wrinkly holes and my forearms are still blistered, but effects aren’t as severe. I can recognize my face in the mirror this morning.

Have to drive back to Saskatoon to pick up the boys at noon.

I have my mother’s hands and my mother’s voice.

I will cope with this, but I sure as hell don’t know how. I am looking around me at the wide variety of pretty songbirds flitting around the yard, at the bright green leaves that have come out on the trees over the past few days, at the playfully innocent newborn calves in the barnyard ... so much lush beauty that is the visual background for my aching sorrow, and the two are connected and yet somehow not.

The last thing I remember before falling asleep last night was reciting the Lord’s Prayer in my head and tears flowing onto my pillow.