Yesterday marked three months since MY MOM died. Every single day I miss her. Sometimes these moments take me by surprise. Like this Shabbat at services. I said the words of the Mourner’s Kaddish and I went off auto-pilot and just felt the raw, painful ache. It is always there. Sometimes I just do a better job of distracting myself so that I don’t have to feel it.

I understand that there will always be this ache. In time it will lessen. There will be moments throughout the year where it becomes acute. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays.

Then there are the moments that are more acute. What’s impossible to anticipate are the moments that sneak up on me. A scene in a movie with a mother-daughter conversation, a cadence in a sentence, the flash of a picture, the taste of something.

I talk to MY DAD and THE DIVA almost everyday. It helps me. This whole business of ‘adjusting to the new normal’ is painful and slow.