"hey lovely, how are you?"

"Heya mate, Feeling cold as it goes - not enjoying this wintry snap which is freezing me to my bones and, seemingly, beyond. Otherwise I'm caught trying to escape the inexorable inertia of procrastination and the ill-winds of autumn malady, presenting, unfortunately, something of a bleak edifice of coughs, colds, aches, pains and lugubrious self-pity. Here's to hoping for the happier thoughts of Spring. But, anyway, mustn't grumble too much. How are you doin dude? Steven"

An email conversation I've just had with a friend. And the more time I have to think the more I seem to slip into an abyss of dull self-pity, it drawing me in like a migratory bird in winter to the plains of Africa. I am getting caught in the merry-go-round of living with a misty mind which, being somewhat exposed at the present time, seems to seek solace in sadness. Sadness seems to be the only justifiable thought allowed unqualified access to my mind, anything else feeling an insult to my mother's life. Indeed it appears that I have introduced a self-imposed, dull, though seemingly consistent throb into my own brain with the efficiency of a surgeon.

I am, of course, still in a state of mourning after the death of my mother at the beginning of last month. Since then I have almost been caught in the theatre that is Death - a grim play that has ensued ever since. Solicitors and coroners, pathologists and nurses seem to enter the stage and leave with the impact of classically-trained actors, laying the ground for the climax which will eventually be the Inquest into my mother's death. Rabbis and Jewry have entered into my life with a gusto unbecoming of their place in my mind, seeking to colonise the memory of my mother 'in the name of God'. They enter my mind even during my defiant act of refusing to drop the 'o' in my typing of the word 'God'.

I have been thrown face-to-face with the previous impossibility of the death of my mother.

In a way it feels like I have lost the only consistency in my life - the irony, of course, easily identifiable. My mother suffered from a significant mental condition for much of her life, a condition which had no meagre effect on the path my own life has taken thus far. There was an uneasy though somewhat comfortable simbiosis in my family which consisted of my mother taking centre-stage in all our lives, the rest of us holding bit-parts in supporting the main actress. My family's physical and mental energies went in great measure towards my mother, though not always, I should add, in a positive light. Sometimes we would laugh, sometimes we would cry, sometimes we would be exceptionally poor and sometimes we would be at the height of anger; often my mother would be a foundation and recipient to all these things whether in fact or in a form of self-imposed fiction.

My mother's ascendancy as the defining factor in my family's life cannot be overstated; neither can it be properly expressed with the imperfect tool of the pen. It is not the simple rose-tinted ascendancy gained by all souls after death - it is something infinitely more visceral. And so my family are left with the invidious position of continuing our bit-parts long after the main actress has left the stage, never to return again. To others it may seem like an almost imperceptible change when they see us about our daily business - to us it feels like we have lost our function. And, of course, while we will go on, it feels that we have been filleted, left with an intractable emptiness in our combined heart.

Sorrow has such sweet temptation.

The weather, on the other hand, bears no little blame for reinforcing the above; of course it's a difficult thing whenever a person dies, but I'm sure it is made distinctly less tolerable by the enroachment of winter, a winter that appears to be reaching further than the climatic conditions outside. In a way the jolted onset to this winter over the last couple of weeks has been somewhat consolatory, a diminutive reminder that the motions of the universe have not yet stopped, bringing with it the glimmer of a hope for that which has yet to come. It is with angst-ridden trepidation that I find no option but to tread the path that I am now on.

I deeply love my mother. And whilst I am trying to understand the grief that has overtaken me I am also trying to understand the concept of living without her. How can such a thing be possible? I guess I have no option but to find out.

I hope to be able to post more here of a less forlorn nature in the days to come.