Mom’s memorial/celebration of life was this weekend.

Gorgeous venue with a stage and longhorns and horses, and beautiful hill country scenery. I did the portraits and handouts, and memory board, and… that’s like it I think? Aunts and uncles did food. Dad did the music. I have no pictures. It was a very nice send off with love from many more people than she ever would have thought, I bet.

I am not bitter or angry but neither am I mentally or emotionally destroyed by the whole thing.

I did my meditation thing I do with Lucas and asked him what I needed to make it through the day. So I visualized him in my mind’s eye, reached out a hand, and IMMEDIATELY saw him drop a Turkish glass evil eye charm in it.

I opened my eye and said “Well fuck you too, Mom. Jesus.” And then I went and got one of the ones I own and kept it in my pocket all night. Just in case.

I don’t know. I am too tired to pretend I haven’t spent the last decades protecting myself from her, so what’s one more day.

I did a reading dad wanted me to do. I wrote that she made me the best prom dress on the memory board. I cried once, briefly (for Lucas) and then dried my eyes and went back to trying to ensure I talked for a while with everyone that was there. I made sure the kids ate. I made it through.

Said prom dress along with the bluntest bob known to man.

But oh, it was draining, don’t let me pretend it wasn’t. I kept mishearing things all weekend. I was very tired each day when I woke up, all week. My house was clean each night. I didn’t exactly feel like myself, though I tried. I saw lots of people who I did really want to see. My cousin did my hair. I wore a new dress and cowboy boots. People were gentle with me.

I also talked to a friend of my Mom’s I SWEAR she told me had passed away. I talked to her and hugged her and a part of my mind just went: This is an alternate reality where Rosemary is alive and hearts are in the center of the chest instead of on the left side, and where its spelled Berenstain Bears and not Bernstein Bears and where Lucas is dead and not alive and that’s why all of this is happening and everything feels off and I’m trapped here now and save me Ashton Kutcher.

Or maybe I’m just forgetting some things and misremembering the others and we don’t make our own realities only out of the things we want.

One of the two.

And starting this week a neighbor is walking our dogs, again- they were getting up to no good and don’t thrive on me having no time for them- go figure. When my neighbor offered to walk them she texted: “Makes me wonder what destruction I’m causing when I don’t get exercise too.” And I just had to stare out into the mid-distance over a cup of coffee at that one for an almost unreasonably long time. And now the dogs are doing better. And it’s another thing off my plate. And they’ve stopped destroying things.

I’m either showing you the exhausted and contented dog or my clean carpets- I’m not 100% which. Wilson is so much bigger than the compact donut in that picture conveys.

Her service was Friday. Monday and Tuesday I did a conference for work and that ws surreal in it’s own way. I had competitors come and very gently and sweetly give me condolences. And former coworkers not know Lucas had died and I had to have that first conversation with them.

I had to listen to banter and hear the mayor say how important this industry is and the whole thing makes me want to scream and run for the hills and what I did instead was make it through and then cry on the way home, both days. It was tiring. And I don’t know what I’m doing with my life sometimes, is all. And unlike that one speaker, I DON’T think the work we do here means we alone will save the planet but neither do I not take any pride in it and the skills I’ve developed in the last 20 years doing it. The EPA wants my input on a project. If you insist, I guess.

In other news, I need to order more author proofs of the cookbook as the store here in town that is carrying them only has two left. I am very very proud of it- but like, in the distance and underwater… and like the ringing of a distant bell.

I unpacked the ofrenda stuff and I brought myself to pick a picture of Lucas for it and get it in a frame. I’m not putting Mom on it.

It takes about 4 hours to set up completely. Maybe today I’ll clear the front table off for it at least as shave 30 minutes off that time.

But mostly today I think I will go lie down in the hammock and pretend I am a lizard on a warm rock in the sun. And stay there for a decade or two.

And like that songwriter I still love once wrote:

“Tomorrow’s another day…

to try again”