August 17, 2026, 4:30 a.m.

Apparently I’m full of writing tonight. Probably because I’m certainly not full of sleep.

It’s almost 4:30 in the morning, and there is a cricket singing somewhere in my mom’s room.

I don’t actually know if the damn thing is inside the house. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it, so it could be sitting right outside her window or hiding somewhere on the windowsill. Wherever it is, it is LOUD, and considering I was already having trouble sleeping tonight, any remaining possibility of that happening has officially left the building.

But lying here listening to this thing chirp away in Mom’s room, I can’t help thinking about how weirdly appropriate it is.

Is this cricket my mother?

Hear me out.

There were plenty of nights when I had something important to do the next morning and Mom would keep me up half the night. It wasn’t intentional. It was the Alzheimer’s, and I knew that. Sometimes nighttime was just difficult for her, which meant it became difficult for both of us.

And somehow, on the night before I’m supposed to go downtown and file her will, there’s a cricket holding a fucking concert in her bedroom at 4:30 in the morning.

Of all nights.

Of all rooms.

Seriously, Mom?

If that’s you, your sense of humor remains impeccable, but could you maybe haunt me at a more reasonable hour?

There’s something about grief that makes you notice these strange little coincidences. Maybe it’s because you’re desperately looking for the person you lost everywhere you possibly can. Maybe it’s because when someone has occupied such a huge part of your life, your brain naturally finds them in things that remind you of them.

Or maybe sometimes your mother comes back as an obnoxiously loud cricket because apparently cardinals and random birds flying into the house weren’t enough.

I don’t know.

I’m not particularly interested in solving the mysteries of the universe at 4:30 in the morning.

What I do know is that once daylight arrives and I can actually see what the hell I’m doing, I’m going to investigate. I’ll probably have to move Mom’s bed and nightstand and figure out whether this little asshole actually made its way into the house.

And if it did, I’ll capture it and put it back outside.

I’m not killing it.

Because knowing my luck, I’ll spend the next twenty years wondering if I murdered my mother in cricket form.

So catch and release it is.

Until then, I guess we’re hanging out together.

Me, lying in bed completely awake.

Beaker, presumably wondering why his human has lost her mind.

And Mom Cricket, performing the song of her people from somewhere in the vicinity of my mother’s bedroom.

At least the mystery of whether I’m going downtown today has been solved. After an entire night without sleep, I’m not dragging myself into the city to deal with probate paperwork. The will can wait until Tuesday.

Which is irritating because I wanted to get it over with, but at some point I have to accept that I’m a human being and not a machine.

Apparently a human being being psychologically tortured by a cricket.

Maybe tomorrow, or technically later today, I’ll laugh about this.

There is something strangely comforting about it underneath my overwhelming desire to scream UGH, MAKE IT STOP.

The house has been so painfully quiet since Mom died.

Tonight it isn’t.

Tonight there’s something making an absurd amount of noise in her room, keeping me awake when I have something important to do the next day.

And for just a second, it almost feels familiar.

Annoying as hell.

But familiar.

So, Mom, if that actually is you…

I love you.

I miss you.

Message received.

Now please tell the fucking cricket to shut up.