Jenn Frank wrote a tragic and beautiful piece about the death of her mother. It reads the way your mind reels after a tragedy. It’s that flurry of emotions where you feel every kind of awful: angry, regretful, hopeless and helpless. Here is an excerpt:

I’d worked so hard to improve my mother’s condition; in reality, I had bungled her death instead. I had encouraged what was already, with or without my stabs at intervention, a complete shitshow.

“I have a couple things I wanted to show you,” I said to her, then, walking to the bed and sitting. “Do you remember the game I did voice for? It came out. Hang on, I’ll show you.”

With multiple organ failure it’s hard to get everything balanced just right so that oxygen is getting to the brain and the person can “wake up.” So, if nothing else, I know how to misallocate an important moment. Here I was, with my mother dying in front of me, and I still wanted her to be proud. Just, proud. Oh, my God, it’s so self-centered.

I demonstrated the game on my iPhone. It was impossible to hear my tinny recorded voice over the sound of her machines, so I repeated the words after I’d heard another version of myself say them. “Line,” I narrated to her. “Hear that? ‘Triangle.’”

Read the whole thing here.