Now Playing: “Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs (1963)
(It was my parents’ song because my mother’s parents once owned a tiny restaurant called the Sugar Shack. Isn’t that adorable?)

Listen along!

Today, I ate Mega Stuf Oreos and drank Coke Zero while trying to write my mother’s obituary. (She’s not gone yet, but it’s coming quicker than we thought. As in, any time now. Or maybe a few days. We don’t know exactly when, but she is actively dying. I wish I could ease her passing.)

I didn’t finish the obituary.
But I did finish a row of cookies. And if grief has a flavor, it might be whatever that hyper-sweet cream is in the Mega Stuf version. I didn’t ask to be alone with a whole package. And yet.

What I did do was pick out a dress for her—accidentally, in that weird way grief hands you a task without calling it what it is. I ordered it, thinking it was for me. It wasn’t. It never was. She would’ve been horrified by the price in real life. That hurts, too. She deserved nice dresses, but she preferred making do.
(For the record, I was given the stunning wrap dress to potentially review. Not sure how to review it now: “Gorgeous blue dress. Great for funerals. Oh, not to wear to the service—to wear for… that other part.”)

I should’ve known when I ordered it, for how blue it was, that it was for her. It matches the color of her eyes—the same eye color she gave four of her five children.

This is the stage where you start making lists that are NO FUN.
Obituary.

Dress. (Check.)
Songs she loved.
(Okay, that one’s been kinda fun, but also: which song list? Preservice? Service? After service? Graveside?)

Funny things she said.
Things you wish she had said.
You find yourself wanting to stick a silly hat on her head. Pop on some sunglasses. Maybe place a daisy behind her ear. Do a photo shoot to remind yourself, dammit, she was here.
Her body is soft. Pliant.
Malleable now in a way that feels like betrayal.

Hospice is a strange beast. People crowd in with good intentions—ministers, nurses, paperwork, decisions. They mean well. And yet I find myself wishing I could put up a sign that says:
“She’s transitioning. We’ve said what needs to be said. Let us sit now. Quietly. Let us see her out with our own words, our own presence.”

I sang to her yesterday. A song she loves, by a Nashville duo she met once while visiting us and adored. My husband tried to find it but ended up playing a different one by the same singer. My mother opened her eyes. She raised her hand.

I should’ve been happy. I was.
And I laughed and cried that it wasn’t my voice that brought her back.
(I’m not saying she could help it. It was just a moment of bitter irony, HERBERT! And I’ll say what I want to say—I will not be all gumdrops and sugarplums right now, and I won’t apologize for that, either.)

When she opened her eyes and looked around, she saw me crying. And though she can’t talk right now, she looked like she wanted to know why I was crying. I thought, Shit. She knows I think she’s dying. And she probably didn’t know she was dying. And now she does. And it broke my heart.

(Of course, truth is, she probably didn’t really see me. She’s only partially aware—and only at times.)

I kept stroking her hair and her hand, admiring her long nails with their pink polish. She would’ve hated me treating her like a poodle. But I couldn’t help myself.

What is poetry, if not all this?
I’ve been writing it all morning in between tasks—not the tidy kind that fits in a journal, but the kind that oozes from your fingers when you’re sticky with grief and cookie innards.
It comes and goes.
Like songs. Like memory. Like appetite.

Later, I’ll go back to the obituary. I’ll dig up facts and try to distill a life into a few paragraphs.
But not now.

Now, I’m letting myself be loud and petty and grouchy and grateful and angry and so, so tired and so wired all at once. And maybe a little high on sugar.

I’m not apologizing for how I feel or what I’m writing. I know this post isn’t closely proofread or smoothly structured or, I don’t know, even well-conceived—and that’s fine.

Yes, there’s some Word Raccoon trash in here too. That might seem inappropriate to some. But that’s how we survive, chief. We find the humor. We invent the bizarre.
We tell those who can’t be here—physically or emotionally—it’s okay.
I know you would, if you could.
And a half-gesture is better than none, if that’s what you can manage.
I don’t think less of you.
Though I wish…

Grief makes a poet of you, whether you want it to or not.
And it makes an eater, too.

So if you need me, I’ll be at the dining room table.
Pen in one hand, cookie in the other.
And soon, by my mother’s bedside again.

But I am writing.
I promise you—I am writing, whether I have a pen or a laptop or not, I’m writing.

And when it’s time,
May flights of angels sing my mother to her rest.

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