My therapist calls them echoes. Or ripples.

It�s this weird cycle of thoughts � a loop that my brain keeps making. Again. And again.

I can see myself in a weird, detached way. And it�s morbid. I�m morbid.

See, I keep thinking about dying.

Don�t freak out. I�m not thinking about suicide. I just feel the need to have all my shit together in case I choke to death on the couch next Wednesday. Or bite it big and fiery Friday on I-35. Or slip and tumble down the stairs tomorrow. Or crack my head open getting out of the shower Sunday� You get the idea.

I feel the need to clean off my desk at work and reorganize my file drawers. I�ve got to draw up a will and get it witnessed and notarized and send copies to my sister and file it at the courthouse. I�ve got to clean out my closets and get rid of clutter. I�m making damn sure that I toss all my frayed underwear. And you can bet that the ones I�m wearing right now are immaculate.

I�m consumed with the idea of making it easy on folks when I die.

My therapist, God bless her, assures me that I�m not losing my mind. This is yet another way that my subconscious is dealing with my mom�s death and the trauma of picking up the pieces.

See, apparently I�m glorious under pressure. I do this mental triage, shunting everything that isn�t critical � including emotions � out of the way so I can deal with crises.

It�s a great talent. It allowed me to go to the salvage yard the next business day after the accident and pick through the crumpled wreck that was her car and comb for anything worth saving. Part of a 12-inch-wide bridge rail had pierced the front windshield and folded and wrapped its way across and through the front seat area all the way into the trunk. Looking at it, I felt�nothing. It took about 20 minutes to go through the glove compartment for the title and registration papers and the trunk for her briefcase and stuff.

That lovely sense of numb stayed with me when my father and my aunt felt the need to describe in detail how horribly my sister and I were handling the funeral arrangements. I was like a stone. Like a rock.

I felt no compulsion to weep, hysterically or otherwise. And not having that distraction is great while you�re trying to get things done under pressure. But there�s a catch in my case: I don�t know how to mentally �step down� and deal with the backlog of emotions. So, eventually, my subconscious takes care of things in spite of my lack of cooperation.

Thus the echoes.

These emotional aftershocks are supposedly echoing my mother�s death, giving me the chance to deal with the frantic anxiety I willed myself not to feel for the almost 18 months since she died.

I�m not finding this pleasant in the least. My co-workers are buying new cars, planning dates. I�m focusing on leaving a nice corpse with all the right papers in order.

Yeah. I know there�s no way to be ready for death. Not really. And all this work my mind is doing to prepare for it just an illusion. Like the lies we tell young children about death:

That it�s something that happens to you when you�re old. That children don�t die, not until they�re very, very old. That mommy and daddy won�t die until they�re very, very old.

Right. Well, anything that helps you sleep at night.

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