(2002)
How do you get over it?
That's the question an old girlfriend asked me.
Well, you don't, I said, using the same answer another girlfriend had once used with me.
Here's what happened: I woke up for the first two years and the first conscious thought practically every morning was: My mother is dead. Almost like a perverse affirmation. It reinforced that she was still with me, obviously: in dreams and in my mind and all the places we visit while we're asleep and the real magic occurs-when we use that part of our brains we don't normally have access to.
If you're lucky the same things that provided comfort and inspiration before still do: art, music, friends, drinks, family, faith in something apart from your own skin. You latch on to whatever you can and eagerly absorb whatever it will give you. This is how you get through.
YOU ARE READING
Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone
Non-FictionQuestion: How do you get over it? Answer: You don't. You don't want to. It makes you who you are. Sean Murphy lost his mother days after her fifty-ninth birthday, following a five-year battle with cancer. In this eloquent memoir, he explores his f...
