Whoa

   Apparently I have osteoporosis now. Mom had that. I remember her telling me that she had been diagnosed and what a bother it was. Her doctor had scolded her that she had the worst case of bone thinning he'd ever seen on someone without a fracture. He was just a child, she preferred her old doctor, his father. But she was going to go ahead and take the drug he wanted her to anyway, Fosamax.
   She was on the other end of the phone, and I was tucked into Michael’s ratty royal blue La-Z-Boy in the corner in our piano room, away from the noise of the TV. I wanted to relax and enjoy chatting with her. 
   There was a period there when we did do that, after Dad died and Ben left. She would call me or sometimes I would call her and we’d talk for a long time. I remember vaguely worrying that she was doing more to keep our relationship alive than I was. Also, that she had a lot going on in her life. Also, that things must not have been terrible because when things were terrible, she did not call on the phone. When things were terrible, she fell silent.
   I have gotten used to believing that was a really long time ago.
   But then today, because apparently I have osteoporosis, I asked the girls (my nieces) if they remembered how old Mom was when she took the Fosamax. I was thinking it must have been soon after my father died, maybe even the year he died, 1988. But Song remembers that she was in high school, and so it would have been 2004. Maybe 2005.
   That recently? Can it have been such a short time ago that Mom's voice was in my ear, telling me things I didn’t already know? And listening to me going on and on, listening to me not listening to her.
   
   Set aside my alarm that if it truly was 2004 or so when she dealt with her bone density that means she made it into her late 70s or early 80s with decently functioning bones, while I am falling apart in my 61st year: 
   MOM HAS NOT BEEN GONE VERY LONG.
   I can’t believe that. It feels like forever.