Now that my mother's dead, we're closer than we've ever been

There will come a time in my life where I'll stop to think about the fact that I've lived longer without my mother than I have with her; and that's only if I'm lucky enough to live longer than she did. She probably would have told anyone who asked that we were, but that just lends itself to the point that I've been trying to make with everything I say, everything I write, and everything I do since well before my dad found her dead on the couch in their living room early one Halloween morning, eyes still open, as though holding on to that last glimpse of the squirrels playing at the base of the tree in their front yard. But when my dad called me the next morning, ruining my Halloween plans to watch "The Exorcist" and see a band called, in perfect gallows irony, THE BODY, I realized that her message was the last conversation we'd ever have while she was still alive. Rather than her teaching me motherly wisdom that I'd absorb like vitamins, "Gilmore Girls"-style, she taught me how to endure mental and physical pain, as they say, "the hard way." Here's what I'm glad I kept In many ways going through her things felt like reading a really interesting book for the first time and it was then and there that I began to form a story of her in mind.