Today I noticed that I was feeling much better.

I worked on a newspaper story about the New England Wild Flower Society, which I visited yesterday in Massachusetts. Then I met my friend Jane at Panera, and I told her stories about my mother. I told her what it had been like to be present with her at her death, and for the first time in talking about it and describing the way my mother wanted me to say my name for her, I didn’t burst into tears.

Jane and I agreed that, as deaths go, and if they have to happen, this one was almost story-book perfect: gentle and loving and peaceful.

Later, the mean lady from my mother’s apartment complex called to give me a hard time about my mother breaking her lease. (Yes, even if you die one month after signing a year’s lease as my mother did, apparently you owe for the months you signed for.) And I took great delight in just staying silent on the phone, letting the business office lady squirm there, both of us knowing that I am not going to have to pay the lease breaking fee, and that my mother has no estate that will pay it either.

We sat on the phone for quite a while, during which I could hear her sputtering with little half-words that couldn’t quite make their way to the surface. Normally I would help out in this type of circumstance. I would say, “Is this what you mean?” And, “Explain to me what you’re trying to say and I’ll listen very carefully.” But I didn’t. I just stood there in Panera, staring out the window with my cell phone up to my ear. I sipped my iced tea, and waited until all the sputterings were done. And then finally she said, “Well…goodbye…” and I said, “Goodbye” as well. When I hung up, I was so proud of myself for not saying thank you or I’m sorry or any of those social phrases that can make awkward transactions go better.

Tonight there was a severe thunderstorm warning, but it didn’t come. We ate pizza with some friends on their deck, and around us, the fireflies lit up the woods like little stars. And, although I know that grief is still right underneath the surface, and that I probably will still have to fight with the lady at the apartment complex, and that perhaps tomorrow I’ll weep when I think of my mother asking me to say my name for her… still…today I felt better.