Unbelievably, it was five years ago this morning that my dad called to say that he couldn't wake Mom. We had had several ups and downs dating back to that summer, including one similar call a couple of weeks earlier, and so I was not unduly concerned as I woke the kids, who had the day off from school, to tell them what was up and dashed over to my folks'...there to be met by cops, paramedics, and the priest. "She's gone, Bill," my dad said, incredulously. And so she was. And so now is he.
Mom was just five weeks shy of her 72nd birthday, and a little more than three months short of my parents' 50th anniversary.
It seems sometimes that she died ages and ages ago, and it seems sometimes she died only yesterday. And sometimes I forget entirely that she's gone.
