The Mind

Interesting things this week

1. I’ve scanned pages of magazines that I like while at work (such as recipes and work-outs).
2. Went to a wake for the seventh time since my mom’s death in December 2010. Not that I’m keeping count, but that’s more than the three that I’ve been to before my mom died and it’s scaring me more and more.
3. We filmed our Tugon video and I’m super excited to edit it. Too bad there are too many other deadlines for Recruitment week that I’ll only have time to do it tomorrow.
4. I am in the last batch of people to enlist for a class this semester. I will get a TTh schedule or so help me God I will load rev or drop it all!!!
5. Because I’m in the last batch, I will be in the first batch for next semester! Heaven has blessed me with fairness for the first time in my entire college life.
6. Today is my last day of work and tomorrow will be my last day of Practucum class! Hurrah!

Shaken

I’m terribly and desperately disconsolate this morning. I was just typing something for work and I suddenly remembered the way Mama would type her documents…she would press the space bar twice and there would be so many red lines for her to correct the double spaces in the file. Instead of pressing ‘tab’, she would just press the space bar for the longest time and there would be a long red squiggly line on that space. She just seems so near and so real.

Oh my God, when these thoughts come in I feel so shaken. Like she was literally alive yesterday and gone again today. All my past memories of her come rushing back all at once and they’re just so vivid yet fuzzy at the same time, like how a polaroid picture brings back a strange nostalgia. I then forget where and when I am completely. It’s as if she’s a call away but we’re a dimension apart. Are we dimensions apart, or has she ceased to exist altogether?

That is what puzzles me so much about death, time, and space. I can’t believe how my mother is no longer able to speak to me when her memory and her life was real, she was a real person, she was HERE. She was once beside me, once hugging me, and now that time has passed…it’s gone, never to be relived.

I don’t know if any of my Godfearing friends have ever felt this much anger and this much fear, this much darkness. Do they understand? I was once there, and I was self-righteous. “He’ll always carry you,” I said, because that’s what you always say. That’s the regular answer for those people who are on the rocks, having problems like a sick relative. “God will heal,” they would say, “prayer is the only way,” they would say, but my mother is dead. Dead, before we could say a proper goodbye. She was not healed and I am 20 years old and already motherless. I am lost and I am down and nobody will pick me up because they’re busy living their own well-lit, well-guided lives. Where are those people now? They have said nothing to me.

May 2, 2011 to May 2, 2012

Moritz H. A. F. V. I.,

Today marks a very important day: one year ago, we met on a field trip in Segovia and you’ve earned many awards since then!

I bequeath to you these medals for being:
1. Amazing
2. Honest
3. Protective (being a damsel in distress like Megara has always been a dream of mine)
4. Patient (you wait for me to do my make-up no matter how long it takes, wait up on Skype, walk slower just so I can catch up, etc.)
5. Caring
6. Persevering (how many miles away?)
7. Un-judging

Too many awards to count, really, so I’ll just wait until August 15 to tell you the rest!

Love,
Joyce A. C. R.

P.S. Sorry for the embarrassing photos :)