2002-05-08 / 10:57 p.m.

(if i can only touch something of yours...)

another one that left me waking sad and apprehensive...

in this one my mother has died - quite suddenly - and, as the oldest child, I am left to deal with her estate.

I move back into her house and ask my brothers to do the same. I tell myself this is the only way I can really take care of them - if we are all under the same roof together once again.

Otherwise I am afraid they will take up with drugs and too much drink and endless drifting....(though in my waking hours I know they have moved beyond those stages in their life)...

She has only been gone for a day or two and I already miss her terribly and I don't know how I'm going to hold it all together and keep things right.

I walk into her room and look at the bed and the dresser and the clothes on the floor. The room is bathed in that slightly green dusky light that it is always bathed in...the only thing different is that she is no longer there.

When I wake up I think of the jewelry box she gave me when I was 10. A small, dark wood box with gold etchings. She received it on her 10th birthday as a gift from my grandmother.

I am glad I have kept it on my dresser - whatever the dresser, whatever the house - all these years...and swear it will remain there....

last night ... tonight