My mother died this morning.

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I'm not really ready to write about this, though I want to just for the catharsis of it, because I need to get the facts down before my foggy synapses lose the memories. The quick facts, then, and to bed. After a day spent toolin' all over south-Eastern Nebraska, I'm pooped. No, more than pooped. Fucked-up-exhausted.

My mother died this morning at 12:43. I, my wife mljm, and my sister Kathy were with her when she went. I have never been present at the moment another person dies, and it was a profound experience that has changed something in me that I cannot yet articulate or indeed even identify.

The funeral is Friday, but I don't feel a need for it. I have all the closure I could possibly want: I stroked her hair as the nerve endings in her neck and left shoulder fired off their last remaining energy; as the blood, lacking any pressure to keep it moving, drained from her face; as my mother went from living human to empty vessel, used up and drained at last of its animus.

Ceremony? It'll be for everyone else: I saw the lady off on her trip.

This was right; proper. A perfectly correct thing to happen. There is nothing left undone, the wheel has completed its turning. Rejoice with me, friends.

Martha Jane is home now, and God bless it.