…for more than a week. Sat, and read, often in what seems like dusklight, and immobile: books, blogs, email, old family memorabilia. Stacks of papers set aside “to do”, dusted with three months’ fluff. I have re-sorted the piles and replaced them where they sat.

Tried to catch up on those important things that have passed us by these last seven or eight weeks. No less to avoid the things that have since loomed large. But there comes a day when you’re exhausted by counting things lost, and stand in the shadow of the new insistent ones that have arrived. Time then to move on from reading.

One’s tendency when a chunk of life falls away is to approach the future as something that must be organized and planned. In this way we can postpone participating for some time, picking just the right step to take back into the present, and then realizing that it isn’t that present any more. Some folks refer to this as “healing”. I don’t know.

My wife’s mother died more than a week ago. I have read all I can stand about iatrogenic mortality, “institutional damage”, “defensive medicine”, and the like.

But I find I’m no better able to plan what to do.

Something, though. Just walking the dog might do. Something.