I hate the feeling of dread, of putting off things I should be doing or should have done. I can’t really identify what it is that I’m putting off. I don’t want to either. I would have to do it then, wouldn’t I. So I rather sit with this discomfort, this dread till it passes somehow. I wash the breakfast dishes, sweeps the dust off the floor and now here I am, at the keyboard.

Thoughts are not flowing. The words are hard to come by. I feel languid. I feel limp. My iMac freezes again and I’m on my laptop. My second cup of tea is almost finished. I’m using tea to fill in the gaps like I used to use cigarettes. At least it has no bad side effects except increased trips to the bathroom. I’m restless. I move to the deck and repotted some tomato seedlings. I’m not sitting stuck.

I cut some tulips and elephant ear blooms from my flowerbed to take to mom’s grave this afternoon. I put them in water and stuck them in the cooler to keep fresh. I head out to London Drugs to get a bath mat for my father. While there, I also got a new pair of sunglasses. I made sure that the bottom of the lenses does not touch my face, leaving their mark long after taking them off. The next stop, The Asian Market for incense sticks and josh paper. Not sure whether we will use them but I will have them. The last stop was to get a potted geranium for mom. It will last a while longer than the tulips. Mom loved flowers.

That was yesterday. Another year. Another Mother’s Day. Now it’s a reminder that my mother is no longer here, a reminder that it’s the day before that she fell and broke her hip and the downward spiral to her final resting place 5 months later. I suppose I am grieving, not only for her but for all of life. I have had more than a few regrets, of roads not taken. I have to live with it all somehow, someway. I am no Frank Sinatra. I didn’t do it my way.