Normalcy... Tedium... These Are Just Words

My mother's death still hits me at odd moments, occasionally with a surprising ferocity. Yesterday, I read the date of a conference set for May 1-3, 2006 and immediately thought, "Mom's birthday," and then remembered that Mom isn't having any more birthdays. That one made me sad for a moment, but it passed. Later, I was talking to a friend about Mom's death and out of the clear blue I felt tears welling up. Egad.

But it's getting better. I've settled comfortably back into my old routine: work, Jake, home, friends. My brother, Tom, and I talk every few days, which is more than we've talked in years. Mostly, we share some new detail we had to manage related to our mother's death.

Tom is taking care of her bills and, it appears, anything related to her money -- what little there is -- and keeping all of it. He told me this week that our Aunt gave him a check to help with funeral expenses and he's getting refunds from most of her utilities and from the deposit on her apartment. The apartment manager said her apartment was the cleanest he had ever seen. And thanks, Tim, for doing most of the actual cleaning. My Mom had some money in her lock box, I have no idea how much (and it could not have been much) but Tom snatched that up the day the paramedics wheeled her out of the apartment.

That all sounds kind of bitter and snarky. I don't mean for it to come off that way. I really don't begrudge him whatever meager moneys result from Mom's death. He certainly was more involved with her in the last several years. More power to him.

The cemetery called me this week. They want me to come in for a "follow-up visit," whatever that means, to get copies of paperwork and talk about a headstone. I'll probably do that next week.

On a completely unrelated note: last night I had a dream that aliens had invaded and were rounding up the population. They weren't interested in Earth's natural resources; apparently, we hadn't left them enough to bother with. They were taking people and turning them into a liquid slurry (I don't remember the process, but the results were pretty horrific) and using that biological soup to create new bodies for themselves.

I'm a lucid dreamer, able to control the direction and outcome of most of my dreams. This whole scenario was being observed in third person, so its unfolding fascinated more than frightened me. Then, I discovered that my company's HR Manager was in league with the aliens and was firing people so the aliens could take them away. At that point, I decided it was time to wake up.

Draw your own conclusions...