life, a week later

Mom passed away a little over a week ago, and--strangely enough, from my perspective--the entire thing seems a bit surreal. The diagnosis, the drawn-out, bedridden battle with cancer, her last breath. The visitation. The funeral that we had to push back an hour to avoid the Santa Parade passing in front of the funeral home. Watching them lower her casket into the vault, but not waiting the fifteen to twenty minutes it would take for them to lower the vault into the ground and start covering it with dirt.

My mom's body was in there. It's just surreal.

I thought I'd be more prepared for the reality of mom's death when it happened since this has been a drawn-out process and not a sudden thing. And honestly, I haven't been as emotional (teary) as I probably would have been otherwise, especially considering the amount of hormones raging through my 26-week-old pregnant body. For the last several weeks, I even had a Spongebob mantra running through my head ("I'm ready! I'm ready!") because I hated to see mom being forced to lie in bed and let her body waste away. But it's just starting to hit me that I'll never be able to call mommy again when I'm sick (I'm a big baby and like her to take care of me, even if it's just bringing over soup) or call her and ask her child-rearing advice (luckily, she gave a lot to Al in those last few weeks--at his request, of course) or even tell her about my day or what the kid has been doing. It's just starting to hit me how much I'll miss her.

I've also had some odd thoughts about the after-life running through my head. Now, I know not all of my readers believe in an afterlife or are Christians, as I am, so if you want to stop reading or think all of this is hogwash, I'll understand. But lately I've been thinking about my brother's beliefs versus general Christian beliefs--is there a "resting" period for souls after life and before heaven, or do souls go straight to heaven? If straight there, what was mom going through? Was she a bit afraid because she was entering this new situation alone? Did she have a private "meet-and-greet" with God, or were her parents and other people she knew waiting to greet her? Is she happy? (Stupid question for a Christian, I know, but I can't help but wonder.) And--for me, this is the scariest question I have--does she remember? Does she remember us? Me? That I'm pregnant? That I'll be having a baby in March? Will she know when I have it and what it will be? Does she already know? I want my mom to remember and know, and I'm so afraid that she doesn't and won't because life here on earth is so imperfect and full of sin. How could people in heaven get away with knowing how life is (or was) here on earth without it tainting heaven a little?

Anyway. Enough of my questions and tears. Life is slowly returning back to normal (or finally becoming normal) for me and my husband; I'm living at home, he's back to work, so am I, and we'll (hopefully) get the Christmas decorations and cards up and out this weekend. We'll get the puppy into training, prepare the house for the kid, maybe even attend a birthing class (and it might be too late to get into one that would fit his schedule). Someday, this will all start to seem real. But not quite yet.