The is and the were.

Because the world is unknown to me, I wonder, if we go to Joshua Tree, to a place that I do not know, to a landscape that I can only dream up, will I find her there, waiting for me? I live in a world where my mother was and I am. We, none of us know our fates (her favorite joke? Want to make G-d laugh? Tell him your plans.) but it is conceivable that I will live longer without my mother than with her. The tense of her being has changed, she has passed, they say, she was, they say. She is I say! But that will slip away, and every night I fall deep asleep, for every day I say, over and over and over again, she is dead, my mother is dead.

Z. told me tonight "I am so sorry about your mother." And he meant it, I know, with a full heart, but how do I explain that I stand, thirsty, at the bottom of a cavernous cavern, and his words are a drop of water falling from heights that I cannot see. No one should know this feeling, until the knowing is unavoidable, but oh! oh! what I wish I did differently while I still had the chance.