What Comes After

On Easter Sunday it would have been hard to illicit an emotion out of me other than mild annoyance.  I was about as tired as one person can be and still remain awake.  The few days proceeding it, a whirlwind trip to Washington DC to bury Mother, had been grueling, it is true, but I was still surprised at the weight of the exhaustion I felt.  I made it through work on Monday without much issue, but sat down to blog during the Butler-Duke game and promptly fell completely, soundly asleep.  Apparently I was doing my best freight train imitation.  I woke up to see the last few seconds of the game (which, of course, took forever to play - part of my general issue with basketball).  Maybe if I had been emotionally drained, I could understand my exhaustion, but I wasn't really.  Or, I guess I should say, I didn't think I was.  I've cried very little after the initial phone call the day Mother died.  I teared up during the brief service at Arlington, but didn't really all out cry.  For some reason, the whole thing seemed like a really long out of body experience.  I know it's all in there somewhere, waiting to spring on me at the most inconvenient moment possible (or so I fear), but for now, I'm stuck in some sort of emotional limbo and can't seem to get past it.

One of the reasons I fear that my psyche has postponed allowing me to mourn Mother is that there is so much to worry over still.  All her affairs loom large ahead of me still.  Just shutting down all her accounts will likely take me days, considering that I am working as well.  How does one do all of this efficiently?  For now, I personally have no good answers.  Other than maybe take it a day at a time.  And make sure you know your parent's social security number, because it's hard to do anything without it.  Most people Mother's age more or less uncluttered their lives long ago for their own sake.  Not my mom.  Two phone lines, multiple insurance policies, tons of random junk crammed into three storage units I have to decide what to do with, a possessed van, and me being completely clueless about what all is out there lurking for me.  I think I'm in for a wild ride.  And no one to share it with.  The decisions are mine.  Am I up for it?  Does it matter?  There is no one else.  The good news is that no one can question my decisions.  The bad news is, there is no one to bounce those decisions off of. 

It's no wonder I'm tired, I guess.  All I can really hope for is to stay awake through the hockey game tonight (final regular season match-up with the Capitals), and to live to sort through another day.  Sid the Kid, play well for me tonight because I'm too tired to be annoyed at another Penguin loss to the Capitals.  They may be Mother's new home team, but I'm still a Pittsburgh fan.

(By the way, there is at least one Terrible Towel now buried in Arlington.)