I'm updating my blog and my mom is dead.

Well, it's been four days and she seems pretty serious about this being dead thing. It seems like it might be permanent, not just some sort of phase she's going through. This morning I woke up after having a nightmare that she died and then I realized that she really was dead. And then I had this odd thought that she was going to stay dead and that is was a permanent thing. I don't know why I would think otherwise. Jesus called forth Lazarus from the tomb, but Jesus was Lazaras' good friend and Jesus was walking around and stuff. And even though my mom seemed to have a lot of friends, no Jesus ever walked in to visit, as far as I know. I took ancient history when I was a freshman in college and the teacher said that there were street magicians raising the dead on every street corner in Jerusalem. The stuff that came out about Jesus raising the dead was written way after he died and far away from where he lived and was suppossed to illustrate how miraculous he was. But there's no way he would have actually raised the dead, because it would have destroyed his credibility and made him nothing more than another street performer. And, as far as I know, no saints have any miracles of re-animating corpses, so no Christian supernatural forces are going to change this. Mom isn't going to pop out and say, "oh this was all just a test. You passed so I decided to come back." what a stupid thought.

When I first got the tatoo on my leg, I wasn't sure I liked it and I was talking to people and I kept saying, "if I keep it . . ." as if it was some easily erasible thing, like a piercing or something. Anyway, I decided I liked it and realized it was permanent. I wasn't just bing pragmatic. But I've never had a strong inner sence of the innate irreversability of some things. read: spacy

I've spent tho whole day being spacy, not being able to remember my way around berkely or the names of major streets like Shattuck. I went out in the morning with Christi to buy paper. The mortuary sells these auful guest books. They're binders and they're pre-printed and have images of things like Thomas Kinkaide on them. My mom liked Thomas Kinkaide, but since she's dead, I can turn her into any person I want in my mind. My reference point slips away. I can say that liking his artwork was only a result of her brain tumor. Right now, I know that's not true, but in time, I'll make myself believe it. Anyway, the guest books are ugly and expensive for what you get. So Christi and I bought nice paper, some of which is made with rosebuds in it. I know she would like that, for real, not just in my invented version of her. And we got some more rice paper and some vellum and some paperboard and glue and good pens and razor blades and it's costing more than the mortuary's McDeath guest book, but at least it's actually nice. Christi made the book used at her own grandmother's funeral.

I went to esperanto class tonight. I was actually paying attention. I was trying to pay attention earlier, but couldn't. I tried to explain -ig and -igx to the class, since Ed was refusing to teach a lesson for some reason I missed. But I dunno how useful my explination was. I got home and the first candle lit here was burned out. It took several times as long as it was suppossed to. These are the candles that were burning while my mom was dying. No wonder she held on for so long. Even the candles burn extra-long. It's like some sort of miracle. A "dark miracle" like the ones at the beginning of Incubus. Maybe a temporary miracle, like the one the brain surgeon provided. Was it worth it? My mom would have been dead by mid-july and saved months of suffering. Were we stupid to think it was a good idea to remove a quarter of her brain and then try to cure her, with such a gigantic tumor, or was the surgeon unethical or uncaring to suggest it? Did it perhaps stand some sort of chance of improving her life for more than the good three weeks afterwards? Did the delay starting radiation treatment make any sort of difference at all? The surgeon said six months and she didn't even make it that long. Maybe that's the diference. Just another woman wih brain cancer, this is all very routine. Oooh, that's a big tumor. We shouldn't make her too big a priority. We can't do much. Better not say that to the family. We'll do what we can, in our way, when we have time.

What did I used to do with my days? I think I was working on some projects. I know I did web stuff for Sarah's reptile zoo. I don't feel much like working and I don't know what I was doing anyway. Too bad I didn't keep a blog back then. I could go look up boring posts of debuggin javascript or something. I want to go away. Christi has already missed oodles of work. My mom was a very major donor to Christi's non-profit. But there's nothing for them in the will. Christi can't just have all the time off she wants, she has work to do. There's a big film festival coming up that she needs to work on. Everything needs to get back to work, back to being normal. Life must go on. But not for my mom.