She Is Gone

My mom passed away yesterday, and all I can think is she is gone. Like that. Even if it wasn't like that at all--it was long, she hung on, we were "ready"--but now she is gone and her not being here is a weight, a thing that I hold in my hands, not knowing what to do. How can she be gone?

Maybe you've heard me say this before, but my mom was magic. To try and explain her would be a disservice to words.

She was beyond superlative: the funniest, the smartest, the kindest, the strongest, the most beautiful, the most eccentric, the most complicated, the mostest...even so. Those words do nothing to describe her.

Now she will no longer be limited by words or body or health. She will live on in the sound of me whistling, in Zoey's eyes, in Ozzy's sense of humor, in the way that I fold my legs when I sit, how I arrange flowers, my collarbone...sometimes I even hear myself breathe and think, god, that sounds like my mother breathing.

Still. It will never be enough. I will never stop missing her, loving her, wanting to smell that mix of perfume and smoke as she brushes her fingers across my face, wishing she were here to tell me one of her long-winded stories filled with the strangest of pauses.

Stupid stupid words, all of them, all of this, falling so stupidly short of what has been lost. Leaving me with this, saved voice mails that I play over and over pretending it's a Sunday months ago, before she was gone.

I love you, I love you, I love you, and I miss you so, so much, too.