I text your friend to let them know they can still come by on the day you both had arranged. It'll be three days after you died. My arm's killing me. I need to get that seen to. We've cleaned a bit more, but I'm still ceaselessly lost in my own home.
But I like that she was the one that snapped it that day- that's the thousand words I see when I look at it...I see the satisfied smile when she gets the pics she wanted. I loathe that picture, but I love its words. I can see her taking it as if it happened a moment ago. I'll have that for the rest of my days.
I also knew that you wouldn't stop worrying about me. Worry about leaving me in a financially bad place. Worry about my having to do as you did when da died- going through his things, donating clothes, etc. You'd tried to get friends to 'shop in your closet.' Worry about what this was doing to me. The same worry that's been a throughline since the day you found out you were goan to be my mother. I tell you to not worry; that I'll be fine. As I sit there, moving your hair just so, I realize that's what you were waiting for, my 'It's OK.'
This is in case you stumble here and it's not immediately known what you find yourself reading; I wanted to warn you, in case you're in a place right now that makes it unhealthy for you to read it.
∞I came home tonight and Helen recounted their phone exchange with the company that manages the 401K Helen has through work. While it'd been a couple of hours since the exchange, the memory still raised their ire.