Suddenly, this summer

My friend, who is a therapist, calls it "an acute grief reaction." In response to the realization in June that my mother had begun the dying process, I turned into a writer of romanticized sexual encounters. I had not personally engaged in sexual activity of any kind since February 14, 1991, the last time I had sex with my husband.

On May 7, 1991, when my husband died, I closed the door on my life. I did not actively want to die. I wasn't suicidal. I just didn't care about living. I picked up responsibility in order to justify my existence. I worked two and three jobs to fill up my time. My response to the world was totally passive. Sixteen years later, we got my mother's diagnosis.

Like my husband's death, my mother's was an anticipated event. In both cases I had a warning about two years in advance. John died from the complications of AIDS and Mom died from lung cancer. Knowing about these things in advance is supposed to give you some sort of advantage in dealing with death, itself. The fact is that all that advance time just prolongs your suffering. You are dealing with a process you are powerless to change. The very inevitability of it is a constant reminder. When death finally occurs, the devastation is complete. The clock stops. Just breathing causes you pain. Your awareness of the world changes. You are locked inside a room that is filled with your pain and it mocks you. You want to scream to relieve the pressure, but you don't know how. It is as though somebody took your voice away. In the case of my husband's death, you could multiply the sensation a thousand-fold because I carried a burden of soul-crushing guilt. I carried around guilt for my mother as well, just not the same kind.

It took me a while to figure out why my reaction to grieving manifested itself the way it did. It took me time and the insight of friends to begin the process of self-revelation. To this day I don't know why I was so willing and able to understand others and not myself.

It began on a rainy day and my observation to a friend was that "wet clothes cling."