Sometimes I don’t hear from my Mom for months on end and then, suddenly and for no reason I can determine, I get a flurry of communication from her in every possible place. Calls to every phone number, twice on each one. Emails to every address. Messages on Facebook and Twitter. They are all as urgent as they are unintelligible, due to lack of sleep or pain pills or both. The main theme is “I MISS YOU!!”

I respond, but I rarely hear back. I only ever get that first message from her. Sometimes I think she forgets that I exist. I disappear like her own personal Brigadoon.