I don’t even know why I’m crying except that I have to because something hurts so very much, something with a name that I cannot reach. I just turned off the porch lights so the neighbors might not see me out here crying. I know it’s not nothing nor exhaustion. It has a form. A thing from long ago. I’m so grateful to be alone right now, me and my soft flute music. Me and my laptop. There’s a time for me and my children, me and my husband, me and my parents, me and my friends. A time. Oh, this hurts! It’s pulling up from inside, pouring out of my eyes. Tired. Yes, I’m tired. On the outermost edge of panic but managing to stave it off. Sleep will do fine. Prayers with David. Reading on my own. Inner permission to do nothing in particular tomorrow. Here and there I feel parts of my body tensing, then I realize they are simply slightly tenser than the rest. A bath maybe. Better, a small bit, from crying. I’m determinedly trying to do the right thing at every turn, but I see that right now the right thing is to step away, if just for a few hours.
I have never been so grown up and it’s hard, but in the doing each minute, when I can complete a task with relative ease, I don’t realize the effort involved. Bit by bit, day by day, it’s adding up. I give myself permission to be quietly responsible for only my children and myself. Another day I can add again my mother whom I love very much, another day, hopefully many years from now after she has healed and seized every opportunity a second chance provides. Hopefully. But that is not why I cry right now, not from the not knowing for her. I am in tears from losing track of something that must be tended. Day by day, I will again be able to give that temporarily lost thing a name, just like I did in October when I first found it among the Ozarks. Just like that, only however it will be at the time, a something new.