Missing Mother

Now more than ever I miss Mother. I wish she were here so I could put my head on her lap as I cried my woes.  I wish I could hear her tell me that I'm strong and that what I'm feeling will pass. I wish I could show her the writing I've been doing to purge the war demons that haunt me. Alas, she is not. Mother is dead and all I have of her is what was imprinted in my memory. I fear forgetting what her touch on my cheek felt like, or the warmth of her forehead on my lips. Sometimes, at night before falling asleep, I can smell the scent of her skin as I kissed her little crippled and disfigured hands. This fucking election has distracted me from my grief. Maybe it's amplified my anger and fear. It feels, at times, like I am overloaded with emotions that overwhelm me with such intensity that my body erupts in violent bouts of regurgitation. I have spent a week with laryngitis from the damage caused by these episodes. I don't know what I feel anymore. I alternate from fear to pain to despair to great sadness to anger to terror to hopelessness.  I can't tell if I'm grieving or in the throws of PTSD. Maybe both? I miss Mother. She would be able to tell me what is happening in my heart.