It's been not quite half a year since my mother died and (in case you haven't noticed) I am using my newsletter a bit like a blog in order to process some things about that. I don;'t know how many more entries like this there will be, but I expect that the holidays are going to be hard and in my practical and philosophical way I feel like starting December off with this kind of personal reflection might help me make the transition into the new year on a better footing. It's not going to be the only thing in my newsletter (which, if it ever becomes just one thing, please assume I've been replaced by a pod person) but if you're not in a space for someone else's grief or you're not ready to hear about dead parents, just know you can skip the entries whose titles begin "A Little More Personal".

My mother died in June.

As we went into this knowing that she had no interest in a traditional viewing, wake, or funeral, we didn't gather as a family until early July, when most of us in the immediate family already had standing plans to gather for the Fourth of July. In the final years of her life, the Fourth had grown in importance just out of the fact that it was about halfway through the year.

There was a point, years back now, where things were so grim that my father told each of us individually that we should probably consider the Fourth our final chance to say whatever needed saying. Things improved for a bit after that, as different treatments extended her life and capabilities (to say nothing of her own single-minded will to keep going) and we wound up with several more such gatherings, but always with the conscious knowledge that each time we gathered might be the last time.