It didn't go that way.
I was up late Friday night, watching a friend live-stream "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for her followers. She and her puppet lion ended the night with a sweet lullaby, which hit me hard. I finally rolled into bed at 4:00 in the morning. I woke up at 6:00 AM and was unable to go back to sleep.
All that time to work with. Plenty of time. My sister wouldn't be by until after 1:00. And I did...nothing. Didn't even reheat the coffee I had made the day before. I picked at a rotisserie chicken I had bought on Wednesday. I gathered together the things my sister would be looking to pick up when she came over. Sat down with an album of old photos my cousin had put together for the wake and scanned them with the scanner I bought a few days before my mom died and posted them to my blog.
My sister came as scheduled. She dropped off a few things for me, picked up the things I had for her. We spoke. I feel like I was half asleep. I didn't even get out of my chair the whole while she was here.
I got up after she left. Watched some of "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." Despite their comic book pedigree, outstanding cast, and preposterous action scenes, I don't really like the Kingsman movies that much - though this movie is highly recommended just for Elton John stealing every scene he's in.
The movie ended as Mass began. My mom never missed Mass - I made sure it was on while she was in hospice, and the week before we had watched it in her hospital room, the day before she returned, briefly, to Allied Rehab. My mom's funeral was the second time I've been at Mass since the pandemic started - the first was for my uncle's funeral. I don't know if I'll be returning to Mass in person. Maybe sometime after COVID is over.
Then I slept. Took a nap. When I was with my mom at the hospice, as she lay there in deathless slumber, I took a lot of naps, sleeping lightly and waking up to monitor her breathing. (If you read this story, you'll understand the significance of naps.) I woke up several hours later when the phone rang once and went silent. I picked it up to hear my sister calling for me; something had happened to make it seem that calls were being answered with a dead line. She had called earlier when she got home, received no answer, and now was getting panicky.
I napped some more. Woke up at 12:30. Realized I hadn't fed the cats all day. "If you love me, feed my cats," I tell the cats she said to me. Not exactly, but it was certainly implied. I laid out plenty of food. "Be sure to give the cats extra treats," she really did say to me. I did.
I went to bed at about 1:15.
I haven't dreamt of her. Last night I had a long, complex dream. Some friends of mine - some real, some I didn't recognize - were trying to help me go on a road trip, which first involved locating and securing a car. Eventually we did, and then we were on our way - to a mall in New Jersey, where in a store on the second floor there was a pop-up remaindered book store. (These used to be quite common back in the 1990s and 2000s, and I have only just today realized that they were probably selling the remaining stock of independent bookstores that were put out of business when Barnes & Noble and the now-defunct Borders moved into town. Since that time, these megabookstores have been getting put out of business by Amazon, and the remaindered books have been getting sold by third parties through Amazon and eBay.) I had $170 on a credit card to spend. I bought a large coffee table book by Penn & Teller, a paperback by Joyce Carol Oates, and several other books.
I woke up, washed dishes, watched Stephan Pastis talk about Charles Schulz on CBS Sunday Morning, ate some yogurt, washed dishes including the cat bowls, set out some food for the cats, and sat down to write this. Soon I'll put in some laundry, take a shower, stop by the cemetery (my sister went there yesterday before she came here,) and get a thank-you card for the priest who conducted my mom's funeral.
Then maybe I'll take another nap.
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