A Year

I was on the train home yesterday, when the Neville Brothers shuffled into position on my iPod:

I was standing by my window
On a cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse wheel rolling
It was taking my mother away

Undertaker, undertaker
Won't you please drive real slow?
That's my mother, my dear old mother
I sure hate to see her go

My heart stopped a little. I remember watching the hearse take my mother away, a year ago today.

And then, when I got to my house, there was a little white stone sitting in the gutter, right at the top of my driveway, about the size of a lima bean. It's not a piece of gravel, it's not a native rock. It's like the rocks my mother loved to pick up on the beach at Fire Island - perfect little surf tumbled stones, pure white shot through with tiny grey veins, flat and smooth in the hand.

She hasn't a headstone, she wasn't buried, so I can't mark my visits by putting pebbles on her tombstone. Instead, it's like she came to me, in the form of that little rock sitting in front of my house.

I can't believe it's been a year. It feels like just yesterday.