August 14, 2026

Today’s update.

I did the basics. I ate, took my meds and took care of Beaker. I also got us both out of the house for a little while. Beaker got his nails trimmed, and later I took him for a walk. I’m trying to get him out more, even if it’s just for little adventures and walks around the neighborhood. I think we both need it right now.

I also put together another new shelf and finally cleaned up the boxes that have been sitting along my hallway wall.

The boxes belonged to my mom.

They had been sitting there because we moved them out of her room to give her more space. At the time, it was just another adjustment we made to the house for her. Today, since they were her things anyway, I moved them back into her room.

That was harder than I expected.

I haven’t really touched her room since she died. Walking in there today felt like walking into a moment that stopped while the rest of the house kept moving. Everything is still there waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.

Her dirty laundry is still there.

I know eventually I need to wash it. I’ll have to fold everything and decide what gets packed away. They’re ordinary chores. I’ve done her laundry more times than I could ever count, but this time feels different because there won’t be another load after this one.

I’m not ready for that yet.

There are still empty bandage wrappers sitting in her room from the night I called 911.

I haven’t moved those either.

I look at them and my brain immediately starts doing what grief apparently loves to do. It starts asking questions that can’t be answered by staring at a few pieces of garbage on the floor.

What if I had done something differently? What if I had made a different decision? What if I had taken her somewhere else?

I know I shouldn’t do that to myself. I made the decision any worried daughter would make when someone she loved was having trouble breathing. I called 911 because my mom needed medical help.

But knowing that doesn’t stop my brain from going backward and searching every moment for some imaginary place where I could have changed what happened next.

The part I still struggle with is remembering how quickly everything changed.

The day before, my mom was walking. She was talking. She was eating and drinking. She was going to the bathroom on her own. She had Alzheimer’s and needed care, but she was still my mom. She was still participating in her own life.

Then she became short of breath.

I called 911.

And somehow that became the beginning of the last chapter of her life.

There are parts of her hospitalization that I still have a very difficult time thinking about. I remember arriving at the hospital and almost immediately having conversations brought to me about end-of-life care. We had barely gotten there. At that point, I didn’t even understand what was wrong yet.

That memory still makes my stomach turn.

Maybe other people would have experienced those conversations differently. I can only speak to what it felt like from where I was standing. I was scared, my mother was sick, and I wanted to understand what was happening to her. Instead, I remember feeling like I was being asked to think about how her life might end before I had even been given the chance to understand what we were dealing with.

Then there were moments when she seemed to improve.

That’s one of the things my brain keeps getting stuck on. There were moments when I felt hopeful about where things were going, and then somehow she was gone.

I still don’t completely understand how we got from one point to the other.

There are still so many questions I have about those weeks, and I don’t expect to find an answer for every one of them. Grief has a way of making you replay things over and over, trying to understand how life changed so quickly. Right now, I’m trying to give myself the space to remember what happened without convincing myself that I should already understand or have made peace with all of it.

But I do need to understand what happened, at least as much as I’m able to.

Maybe understanding won’t change anything. It certainly won’t bring my mom back. But I think part of grieving her is trying to make sense of those final weeks because everything happened so quickly. Eventually, I’ll probably have to make peace with the fact that some questions may never have answers.

Right now, I’m not there.

And maybe that’s okay.

It hasn’t even been a month.

I’m trying to rebuild my life while I’m still trying to understand how the old one ended. I’m rearranging my house, putting together shelves, taking Beaker for walks, taking him on little adventures and slowly figuring out how to exist in spaces that used to include my mom.

Today, that meant walking into her room.

I moved some boxes.

That’s as far as I got.

The laundry can wait. The bandage wrappers can wait. Her room can stay her room a little longer.

I don’t know when I’ll be ready to change any of it.

Actually, I seem to be saying that a lot lately.

I don’t know.

Maybe that should be my new motto instead of “day by day.”

What am I doing tomorrow? I don’t know.

When am I going to feel like myself again? I don’t know.

When will I be ready to go through Mom’s things? I don’t know.

How am I supposed to make sense of everything that’s happened?

I really don’t fucking know.

And maybe, for right now, that’s the most truthful answer I have.

Anyway, I’m going to end this here.