Really missing my mother tonight. Haven’t really talked to her for two months, which is by far the longest I’ve gone without talking to her in my entire life. I understand intellectually that she is gone. But it seems unbelievable that this person that I have had beside me for 52 years is just – poof! – not there. Her apartment is cleared out, her possessions are scattered to the winds, and most bizarre of all, her ashes are sitting in a wooden box on my dining room table. When I think about it it seems absolutely crazy.