Time On My Hands

It has been just over one month since my mother died and I find myself with time on my hands, time I haven't had for a very long time. This time, this time that at one point I wished for arrives at the end of my workday, that time when I used to sit with my mother, drink tea and watch Oprah or Ellen. Those days when I often thought how I would prefer to be somewhere else, anywhere else with my her but where we found ourselves. I never wished for her to be gone, if anything just the opposite, I wished for her to be here, fully here with us again.

So what do I do with this time? How do I fill it and at the same time relinquish the guilt I feel at that part of me that relishes the freedom I now have? The freedom to work late or go home early, the freedom to stop at the store, run an errand or simply go home and spend time with my husband. How do I quell the horror that my adaptation to life without my mother, life after her death is showing the slightest signs of normal, normal after only one month. Does that make me a bad daughter? A bad person?

My sister and I say the word "okay" a lot these days. We say it to each other as reassurance that we are okay, that 'it' is okay, that we will be okay. We started saying it at our mother's bedside one month ago. She said it to me when she left my house this weekend, this beautiful weekend that marked the beginning of summer in Maine, that marked the 35th Anniversary of my marriage. We said it to each other as we visited the cemetery. We said it when we planted flowers at the graves of our great-grandparents, our grandparents and our parents. And we mean it, these okays.

We mean it through our tears, we mean it through our hugs and we mean it through our laughter. Yes, our laughter. Our laughter that is returning, returning with almost the same spontaneity and joy it once had. Not quite full force, but we both know that it will. It will return, all we have to do is give it time.