All alone since mum passed away

It seems strange that there's noone to drive up the motorway to visit. I used to enjoy the approach to the motorway ramp, just down the street, with the radio tuned to ABC 702 in the mornings and the talk shows emanating through the speakers. It's very strange to be able to stay inside in the mid morning instead of venturing out to go to see mum in the nursing home or in the hospital. It has only been a few days since mum passed away but already the tremors are being felt.

In loneliness. The empty hours which previously would be filled with a sense of purpose. Now they are spent wondering what to do. Waiting for the late afternoon when the wine can decorously be brought out to sip. Waiting for someone to call, to tweet, to post. Lonely hours in limbo.

I am waiting for the funeral, which will happen next Monday, to rouse me from this torpor. I will probably cry. I have met with the funeral celebrant and we have decided that I will just talk extempore for a while about mum. Mum. Her photo with me appeared on Facebook this morning. The photo we took in 2009 when I had just moved up to Queensland to look after her. Since then we have spent a lot of time together, eating dinner, watching the corny UK TV shows she loved so much in the evenings, in the nursing home, in the hospital.

Waiting for the funeral but also waiting for the rest of the process to get through, including the proving of the Will and the issuing of the death notice. All these things take so much time and consume so much erratic attention. In the meanwhile I am sitting here with a glass of chardonnay and watching TV in the background while attending to social media. A quiet, solitary place animated by other souls in their textual brackets, as it were, in their own little boxes of sense and quotation. I watch the world go by and wait for the time for dinner to arrive. It's almost like being in company, and sometimes I talk with someone. Like you. I can talk with you.