There are some dates I’m good with: remembering my childhood best friend’s birthday (most birthdays, actually, whether I know you well or not), the day I moved to Oklahoma, the day I read To Kill a Mockingbird, the day I first bought a grown-up yoga mat; and, then there are those that have slipped into the crevices of my mind, and been stretched into question by time: the day I graduated college (or would have, had I not skipped the ceremony for Hawaii), the day I met my first love, the day I ran my first race. It’s inexplicable, really, why some dates stick and some dates don’t. I can’t find a pattern of good vs bad or old vs new. It’s just what is, I suppose.

A year ago today, I saw my mom for the last time. One could argue that I saw her at the funeral, but we really just shared a room. I didn’t go to the casket. I held my sister in one arm and niece in the other while a line of people created a human curtain in front of her. I think that was by subconscious design on my part, though. That’s a story for another time, and it’s actually a little bit of a funny one. Can funerals be funny?

Anyway, a year ago today, I saw my mom for the last time. It was Dali-esque.. the whole twenty-four hours. It was so surreal that I couldn’t even put pen to paper about it. I honestly still feel like I can’t. The written word works for so many moments in a person life, but it doesn’t do enough for the ones in which you truly see people’s pain manifest itself in such outlandish ways. Even as I sit here trying, I don’t know if this is going to end up being about my mother, about my sister, or about me. Perhaps all three. I mean, it’s hard to tell any of this without telling all of it. After all, as much as we don’t want it to be so, we are all part of each other’s story.