Mom countdown - Day 20

I couldn't sleep last night, so went downstairs and watched two episodes of "Sex and the City" and the start of "Tin Cup." At midnight, I thought I really just SHOULD try to sleep, and it worked until 5AM when the burning started in my chest. I drank some water and took some papaya enzymes, but remembered that it couldn't be indigestion if I hadn't eaten for 10 hours, then I remembered what happened last time: one of the last near misses with Mom I'd pulled a rib out, then Tammy noticed my torso was twisted and I had a hiatal hernia, so she pushed down on my sternum and fixed it. When that happens I can't eat, and wake up in the middle of the night with the burning sensation.

So I'm sitting here, having lost 2 pounds while in Bismarck, and thinking about not being able to sleep, and the burning in my chest, and not being able to eat, and I'm wondering how I can rise up to a higher level to live right now. I feel like I've downslid a bit because I just don't want mom to die. When I think about never getting to be with her again on the physical plane, I just can't tolerate that thought, then I realize that's my limited physical thinking, and it would be helpful for me to rise up and see it from my expanded perspective, and I can do it somewhat, but then my chest burns and I think I'm not doing it enough, so I take a deep breath and close my eyes and see myself and Mom on a higher plane, holding hands and looking into each other's eyes. I hold that image in my mind, freeze it into my heart and vision so I'll have that reality for the times to come. We ARE together in that expanded place, she WILL always BE here, and it WILL be okay. It's okay right now, it really is, but just sometimes when I think about how fast this whole thing goes, this brief life, I see my dad sitting at his computer desk, playing Alan Jackson's "Itty Bitty" and singing along to it. "It's all right, to be itty bitty," singing about how fast the whole world just spins around and is over.

On the way home I listened to a country station because Erik said country's good to listen to in the summer, and three songs in a row sang about how love is the most important thing in the world, and it makes everything else seem little, so love is what I'm focusing on today, praying and hoping that I can eat something besides purified water. I'm cleaning for the goddess party - it's up to almost 70 women, I think. I lost track around 55. It's going to be a good thing, this party. These women, most of whom I know, some I won't, gathering in my backyard to laugh and connect and come together for a brief moment of communion, to feel not so alone, and to remember why we're all here.