August 20, 2026

Today’s update.

I tried to make it through today as best as I could, but today marks one month since I lost my mom.

A whole fucking month.

I don’t understand how that’s possible. It still feels like it just happened. Sometimes I have these moments where my brain seems to understand that she’s gone, and then there are other moments where it feels like I’m still waiting for her to come home.

The house is still way too quiet.

I’ve gotten used to a lot of things over the past month, or at least I’ve learned how to function around them, but I haven’t gotten used to the silence. I don’t know if I ever will. There were always people here before. Mom was here. Her caregivers were here. There was movement and conversation and noise. Even when I was hiding away somewhere trying to get five minutes to myself, I knew she was in the next room.

Now I can have all the quiet I want.

Turns out I don’t fucking want it.

I went to therapy today, which was probably a good thing considering the timing. It felt good to sit down and actually talk to someone about everything that’s been swirling around in my head. Therapy days tend to suck the life out of me, though. I leave feeling like I’ve done something important, but also like someone unplugged my internal battery and forgot to plug it back in.

I got some more estate stuff done too, but after that, I didn’t accomplish much.

And that’s okay.

I think.

I wrote a poem today about what this one-month mark feels like. It’s in the post right before this one if you want to read it. Sometimes poetry manages to say the things that these updates can’t, and today I needed both.

Because I’m feeling some type of way.

That’s about as eloquently as I can describe it.

I’m emotional. I’m hurting. My thoughts are all over the place. I’m functioning, technically, but I feel a little zombie-like. I’m doing things because they need to be done, answering questions, handling paperwork, going to appointments and moving through the day while some other part of me is standing still thinking, My mom has been dead for a month.

It’s a really fucking strange way to exist.

Thinking About Tomorrow

Tomorrow I meet with my doctor to talk about genetic testing and what my own risk for developing Alzheimer’s might look like.

That should be interesting.

I don’t really know what emotions are going to come with that conversation yet. Alzheimer’s has occupied such an enormous part of my life for so long. I watched what it did to my mom. I spent years adjusting our lives around it, learning how to care for her as it changed her, and now I’m sitting on the other side of all of that asking questions about my own future.

So we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

There’s another future I’ve been thinking about too.

Once I get a few more things sorted with the estate, I’ve decided I’m going to take some of the money and buy myself a new car.

My heart has always been with Honda, but apparently Honda has decided to make my life difficult by scrapping its electric car plans, and what they do have isn’t really what I want. I want an electric sedan. I don’t want a giant SUV. So I may have to commit the ultimate act of betrayal and look at other brands.

Sorry, Blue Belle.

You’ll always be my girl.

I’ve also been thinking about buying a small RV.

Nothing enormous. Just something that Beaker and I could comfortably travel in together.

I’ve spent so much of the last six years structuring my life around caregiving. I don’t regret that. Not for one second. I would do it all over again if it meant having my parents here. But somewhere along the way, my world became very small because it had to.

Now suddenly the entire world is open again.

That’s exciting.

And terrifying.

And incredibly fucking sad.

Because this isn’t how I wanted to get my freedom back.

I wanted to travel knowing I could come home and tell Mom about it. I wanted to buy a new car and show it to her. I wanted to build FRDCreations and let her see what it became. I wanted to have adventures and still have my family waiting for me when I got home.

Instead, I’m trying to figure out what life looks like when the people I wanted to share it with aren’t here anymore.

Maybe that’s why the RV idea keeps floating around in my head.

Beaker and I could just go.

See places I’ve never seen. Take ridiculous pictures. Find weird roadside attractions. Explore cities and little towns. Let him sniff his way across America while I figure out who the hell I am now.

I have a lot of life left to live.

I know that.

And I might as well actually live it, right?

That’s the logical part of my brain speaking. The grieving part of my brain would trade every car, every trip, every dollar and every future adventure for one completely ordinary afternoon with my family again.

That’s the contradiction I’m living with now.

I can want a future and desperately want my past back at the same time.

I can make plans while grieving the people who won’t be part of them.

I can be functional and completely fucking devastated.

Apparently both things can exist at once.

So today marks one month.

I went to therapy. I handled some estate stuff. I wrote a poem. I survived another day in this painfully quiet house.

Tomorrow I’ll go to the doctor.

After that, I’ll figure out the next thing.

Maybe someday Beaker and I really will be driving across the country in some little RV, arguing about who gets more of the bed while he tries to eat something he found at a rest stop.

Maybe I’ll find pieces of myself out there.

I don’t know.

Today, though, I’m not going to try to make one month mean something profound.

It just fucking hurts.

I miss my mom.

I miss my family.

And I would trade every possible version of my future just to have them back.