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I was cleaning Zoey's room the other day when I saw it--my mom's old cell phone. After my mom died, Zoey asked to keep the phone because it smelled like Grandma Glitter, cigarettes and perfume. Don't look at it, I said to myself, keep moving. I folded a shirt and then said fuck it, picked up the phone, flipped it open, inhaled deeply. The smell is so faint now. It's been a year and a half and I can hardly smell her anymore.

I tried not to write this because I think sometimes/most times/all the time I am too dark. I'm afraid you will all get annoyed with my bleating. But then I think about my mom's refrigerator, all the stupid quote magnets that clung to it. If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud. This is your world--shape it or someone else will. Be Nice or Leave, Thank You. 

My mom loved David Bowie. And doing things you weren't supposed to do.

When someone you love dies people often tell you that they will live on in your memories, your laugh, in the sound of your whistle and the way you turn your head like she did. And that is true, but so is this: when someone you love dies, they keep dying. Over and over in moments. It's been a year and a half and my mom just died yesterday when I realized she will never get to be a very old woman. What would she look like with hair a puff of white? Would she have still worn eyeliner at 80? (Fabulous, and yes.)

Every now and then Zoey brings her up out of the blue. I miss Grandma Glitter, she says, and before I can cross the room to hug her she is sobbing. I do too, I say, because I don't know what else there is. Sometimes it lasts for an entire evening, Zoey hiccup crying, me trying to cheer her up, divert her attention, wondering if I should cry, should not cry, goddamnit why can't I seem to cry? Ozzy doesn't really understand, and even though whenever we cross the Golden Gate Bridge he brings her up, my mom will never know that Ozzy calls people You Frickle Mickle Pants when he is pissed. She would have loved that. Him. Her. Them at 4 and 9 and then. 

And then there is this. I think I put a pause on grieving my mom while I was being diagnosed, researching treatment, raising the money, going to Tel Aviv, getting chemo. It seems that there is a cap to how many horrible things you can focus on at once so I did not think of her much at all. Now that I am hopefully fingers crossed on the other side of something, there she is again. Dying again. Still dead. Each time like the first time when they told me she was gone. 

Maybe this is how it is, how it always will be. A constant shock that I can't call her, hear the soft crackling inhale as she smokes while talking to me on the phone, how we would have talked about how proud we both are of Bruce Jenner, how I will never know if she would have liked that book I just read. As I write this I am wearing her old robe, a singed cigarette hole in the wrist of the sleeve that I poke my thumb through sometimes as if we are holding hands, the sharp melted edges her fingernails lightly tracing my skin, though the bathrobe now smells of Tide and my tea.

Zoey teaching Grandma Glitter how to diaper a one day old Ozzy.

xo,
S

p.s. If you haven't read this post written by my mom about the first time she took mushrooms, check it out and you will see why she is so missed.