"When is it going to end?" And I said "Never."

I wonder why I never feel alone. I wonder why I wonder why
I never feel alone. I do not wonder more than that – which is
to say, I disembark from questions fairly soon when they do
not invite an answer: probably because I'm so abruptly thrown
by glances – distracted by each next new serendipitous romance –
exaction of yet more peculiar blasts from me of shocked attention:
little room for the retention of the not-yet- or the under-known.
But still I wonder why I never feel alone. Perhaps it is genetic:
no matter how eruptively unkempt, frenetic or unkind my feelings

or the world appear to my bewildered mind, I find I think about
my mother: how she orchestrated every day according to an order
which reflected non-negotiable pleasures: she'd refuse to let her
treasures be maligned or taken: whatever else would be forsaken –
husband, son, and most all of the other grand abundant ones
with whom she'd shared her work and life and love and humor –
lost to Alzheimer’s and AIDS, malignant tumor – these and others
shot the back and cracked the whip and chopped the trunk –
but never caused the sort of final funk in her I've seen in others

who have found their hopes debunked: somehow in her DNA my
mother thunked that car-door shut and looked into the sunset
and regarded it as beautifully enough. Or so I think. As I wonder
why I wonder why I never feel alone, it seems I've learned to
drink a fine selectively amnesiac solution which she also drank:
perhaps that’s what I have to thank. We've had the talent to
forget regret. And so I woke up yesterday from one stray dream
perplexed. My mother faced me as if ties had not been severed,
and asked: “When is it going to end?” And I said “Never.”