From an email to Dave about today:

Yesterday I didn't accomplish all that I had hoped. I was going to go to storage and sort through all the crap my uncle left there, but I didn't. I putzed around, went to workout for quite awhile, and then found myself with an empty evening. So, I went to visit my mom. I took the journal I've started keeping (a book), my camera, and big red dahlia, and drove over there. Took me a little while to find her as it has been years since I've been there. When I did, the tears poured forth. I sat down on the grass beside her name and just let myself cry. When I've let myself cry over her before I've been somewhere else, sometimes in Korea where I've been unable to visit her at all. But here I was crying with her and it did feel better. It's weird to think that just sitting there next to a little concrete slab with a brass plaque bearing her name would provide comfort, but it does.

After awhile, I started talking to her, telling her how hard it has been for me without her. How since she has been gone there has been one huge empty hole and I've built my whole life on filling it; it's been the most important thing. And then how it's so strange to love and miss a person I barely remember. I don't even know her, and I can remember only small things. There are pictures, of course, but they don't tell the story. I told her I was angry that she didn't leave a journal for me to read and learn. I said I was fastidious about documenting my life because I was afraid to be forgotten like she has been.

She is alone there in the cemetery. Around her are couples. But newly arrived just to her right is a man born in the same year I was. He is alone too and I thought maybe they could comfort each other.

I found myself chatting on about my life, not catching her up on everything, but just sharing the big things and how right now I'm in a lot of pain. I wondered outloud if she knows about me and what she would think if she does. But when I started to feel the anxiety of disapproval, I decided it didn't matter because she wasn't perfect and I know that I'm a good person. I asked her if she was like all the others in the family or not and guessed that probably she is like all of them. I asked if she had confidence they would raise me with love; I told her I didn't grow up feeling loved. Told her that her family was crap, but I think she knows that.

When all was released I started to feel lighter and tired of talking. I decided to stay a little longer though, as the sun was riding low in the sky and shadows were cast below the letters of her name and the dates below it. It's hard for me to read her name and not think of me. It is exactly the same and running my fingers over the raised letters, what I feel is my name. The only difference is the "K" for her middle initial.

I took a picture of us together, by laying down with my head next to the little square of concrete, outstretching my arms and letting my camera focus and choose the speed and aperture settings. I took three because I couldn't tell where I was shooting exactly except for a reflection in the uv lens.

Then, when I really had said about everything there was to say, I got out my journal and started writing about what it was like to be there, recording everything I've written here so that I could remember.

I noticed that her little headstone didn't have any words besides simply her name and the dates of her birth and death. Others in her near vicinity said things like "Beloved Mother" or "Dear Father". I wished hers had some words that gave some indication of who she was, but here she is only a name and two dates. So I wrote in between the dates in pencil - that mechanical pencil from Korea - "Mom, I love you." Later, on the way home I thought I should go back there with oil paint and wrap her in color.

While I was writing, I took her pocket knife (the one I found recently among all her stuff that was moved from G-ma's house) and set it on the plaque above her name. I don't know why. Guess I wanted her to hold it again or to let her know I had something of hers. I told her it was a thing of hers that I remembered; I saw her use it many times.

Eventually I was tired of writing, had talked it all out, and was starting to get chilly. I prepared to leave, but had a hard time walking away. Inexplicable, it is. I think rationally that there is nothing there but concrete, brass, earth, and a container of ashes; yet I couldn't confront the separation. I lingered a bit and then went, thinking of all the other times when I can't initiate separation. It all comes back to her. That thought brought the tears again and when I got back to the car I had to sit and cry for awhile before starting up the engine.