There were days in February where I was a blank. Where my notes read things like “I worked. I can’t remember anything else.”

Since it was grief at losing my Mother that had me so disconnected, I decided to write about my memories of her on those days.

This is from my Senior year of high school in 1996. Any time I didn’t feel like going out to “Halloween” houses after a Friday night football game, my friends (most of whom were in Marching Band with me) would hit my house. None of us were ever destructive, just bringing along loads and loads of toilet paper that we flung into every tree we could get to without disturbing anyone inside the house.

My house was an ideal target.

This night, we had either gotten in late and weren’t asleep yet or they just got a little too loud and we woke up, and my Mom ran outside with an old, broken b-b gun and chased my friends away. One of them admitted that for a moment, they thought she was actually chasing them with a live firearm.

She never stopped being proud of herself for this.

I miss her fearlessness and her humor. I miss my Mom.