Birthday

Today I become the age that my mother was when she died.

Logically, I know it means nothing. We two, such different people with wildly dissimilar life trajectories, emotional landscapes, traumas, joys, animal bodies.

She lived 42 1/2 days after her birthday before her lungs gave out.

First, the lung without the massive tumor collapsed, which I imagined being like a circus tent folding down on itself. Pigeons perched along the roof line tossed fluttering into the air, elephants waiting outside to enter shifting back and forth on their leathery-pillar legs, a clown car spining round and round out of control (I’ve always found clowns scary)—all in the confusion of limp fabric and ruined architecture lifeless on the ground.

How will I step through my next 42 1/2 days?

It is okay to have small goals, which may be way bigger than you think. Okay to say, “Today, I will focus simply on being.”