The Afterdeath

I just looked back over entries from the last couple of years and am left with a very odd feeling. I thought somehow that when I wasn't dealing with my mother's pain, watching her become frighteningly thin with a distended belly like a starving child, wasting from the cancer, her hair gone, her once perfect teeth destroyed and rotting, putting morphine drops into her mouth, lifting her with my husband to clean her, and so on, I would, despite the obvious grief, feel some relief. Yet I don't. I feel much more unhappy now than I did through those two years of physical horror. I miss her so much it's unbearable and now I have the time to actually feel the feeling. Without her, the world feels empty to me. It feels devoid of meaning. She was my soul mate, for lack of a better term. I am deserted.
There is another, subtler aspect. When I was looking after my mother, I had a clear purpose. We were aiming for health and for survival. Each day of survival was a triumph. I didn't think long-term because I couldn't see beyond the day or week. I had no time to myself, no time to think. I would say the main reason I wrote this blog, which I really don't care if anyone reads or not, was because it created a reflection for me in a way that a diary would, yet somehow doesn't. Now I look at my life, the one that I have without her, and I see no clear purpose. I have to create one. I don't feel strong anymore, I feel incredibly small and weak. Smaller and weaker than I can remember ever feeling. It's a little bit like being an adolescent again except that I know better.....I know there are other ways of feeling. Also, when I turn my eyes away for a moment a pile of responsibilities (papers to sign, calls to return, bills to pay, etc.) accumulates so there isn't much room for teen angst.