She's Gone

I keep playing that Daryl Hall and John Oates song "She's Gone" in my head.

Allie moved to another state. My little girl moved away.

That morning felt like I was going to a funeral.
I don't mean that in any glib way, I have been to many. Too many.
I didn't think I could get out of the house.

 We drove her car. Drove away from Oklahoma.

I tried for her not to know how devastated I felt. She seemed fine.

I left her there. Looking at her with her pillow under her arm took me right back to that first day of school. She was so mad that I wanted to stop and take a picture.
That was a big day too but dammit she still lived with me.

But now, college...There she went. Swallowed up by all the other kids.
So ready. So excited.
Leaving her on that college campus, I went to the car and bawled. 

I didn't cry until I felt better, I bawled until I felt worse.

I got on the train to come home, head pounding. 
The four and half hour train ride became six hours. Misery. Truly.

This guy got me through that ride.

Away from Allie. Home to my husband.

I felt like I had been beaten the next morning.

But something started to happen...

a shaky effervescence came over me.
My loss, my grief means that Allie gets to start her wonderful life.

Baccalaureate Service

I want so desperately to post about the events surrounding my daughter's high school graduation. All I can really think to show is the shoes we wore. The clothes we choose.
Very deep, right?

Actually I am in in limbo. I can't make anything.

I can't remember anything.

I cannot form full...

I am in a holding pattern, hovering as Allie spends her lasts days as a full time resident in my care. I don't want to start any projects. I don't even want to water the plants in pots. They are dead. Dead. Dead dead. Yellow. Awful. I can't even throw them away. I just hover in the present moment. With all the words.

Words, words, words in my head that scatter and fall into each other and build up like in Tetris until I can't sleep or breathe even.

Deep breaths. Agitation and dark thoughts as I teeter on the brink of depression. Not gonna. Not gonna fall into that and pudding through these last days of summer, before she moves away, out of state.

You can tell me she will still need me. I know that. Having buried my own mother shows me how difficult it is to live without Mother. But for sure this is a transition from her residency and my full time service into something else.

And it's going exactly like its supposed to...