I'm at my parents' house and a thunderstorm is starting to build over us. I can hear the rumblings and grumbles of the storm. It will more than likely be a doozy of a storm.

Yesterday, my Mom passed away. She slipped away while in her sleep, having never awoken from her unresponsive state that began on Saturday.

Did I tell her everything I wanted to? Of course not. But I tried, I did try. Every minute that passes I think of another quadrillion things that I want to whisper in her ear, that I want to laugh and giggle over while I sit on the counter and she sips her coffee.

My mother was amazing, especially when it came to accepting and supporting and loving me for all my quirks. I had this habit since childhood of sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter while we chattered away. We talked about everything and anything. Good God, I loved her. I still do.

For all the highs and glories of love, it comes with a hard price when our mortality is realized. I'll pay that price and I'll pay it again and again as I remember her.

She loved Christmas. She would deck the house out in lights, trees, figurines, little stockings on the fireplace, dangling colored beads from the ceiling fans. You name it, it was up in our house. We would start our shopping early and would laugh and giggle as we stocked the presents high up under the tree. More and more and more. The best part of Christmas, Mom and I agreed, was buying presents for our family and waiting in breathless anticipation for them to get to open them. And, of course, teasing them mercilessly until they could.

Mom could kill a plant by looking at it a long time ago, but one day it all changed. Her black thumb went green in the blink of an eye and the house was filled with plants. It was a forest in here. My apartment is a forest now. Over the years, I filled it with a myriad of plants. It was something, one thing of many, that we shared.

The plants are sparse here at my parents' now. They died and left as Mom's illness and pain progressed. But the one's that remain are being tended with a deep loving care from my father.

I stayed here with him last night. He went to bed early and I sat up in the living room. I watched Aliens (I haven't seen it in years and it's a good movie!) while I clutched a stuffed dog that my Mom owned (out of remembrance of her and also for the scary scenes).

My parents had separate rooms - not because they didn't love each other, but honestly because my father snores like a train with sleep apnea. I found him in Mom's room. Dad was curled up on her side of the bed, the blanket I had given her during her hospital stay over his shoulders. The television in her room was on, tuned to Cartoon Network - Mom always watched the t.v. on low sound until she drifted to sleep.

I'm up and down and a myriad of different directions at once. I sent her an email this morning. Maybe there's email in Heaven. But, I could never tell her all the things I want to tell her - not in one sitting. It would take years and years of continuous nonstop talking (something I am probably capable of doing).

The funeral is Thursday. The interment of her remains on Friday.

While I was outside, I was standing under the trees in the back yard where we used to put a hammock out in the summer. The radio was on in my father's shed. I had put it on 101.5, a local station that plays mainly some soft rock, etc. The channel grumbled and switched to piano music. It switched again to an oldies song. I can't remember the song entirely. Then it switched again to an 80's station and the song with the lyrics "No one is to blame" came on. The chorus repeated until the end of the song. The station switched again to jazz. Then again to another oldies song, something that said "stay a little while". This happened in less than five minutes in rapid succession.

The dogs keep jumping up and running out of the house, barking and wagging their tail at the gate. But there is no one in the drive way. They have run, tail between their legs, from the back bathroom twice. And have stood, stock still, in the middle of the yard staring into space at the back gate or standing in front of the back deck and barking once, pausing, barking once, pausing.

It's a doozy of a storm that's coming. From the look of the radar it might match the one I'm having internally at the moment. Rain is good for cleansing the earth. Maybe it'll do the same for me.

Regardless, I have a bunch of Mom's yarn. She loved to crochet and I do too. So I get to continue what she started and feel her as I work.

The world is different now. It looks different. Feels different.

I keep expecting her to pop in her in the computer room and ask if I've ate yet today. Or start vacuuming right when an interesting part of a movie comes on television.

I hope she knows I love her.