After sepsis in April and a long long slow decline isolated in the nursing home where she went for rehab and never went home, mom died in December at age 79. I brought her home with me for her last few weeks. I did everything i could to give her a good death and I believe she had one. Then suddenly she was just gone. No funeral. No gathering or memorial service of any type except for kind of a lame one with some of her family. I’m not grieving. We weren’t close but in her last months as I cleaned out her apartment and talked to family and friends about her, I discovered a lot about the reasons for our damaged relationship and the person she really was, and I came to forgive, respect and love her and to see her more clearly, and to see her in me-in good ways. It was healing. But now I don’t have her and some part of me cannot understand it. I am just not grieving. I found a new lover a few weeks after she died and am applying to grad school. I am keeping busy and distracted. When my sister asked if I could pick up her ashes from the crematorium, I refused. Later I realized it’s because I’m just not facing that she’s gone. I guess I just really need those rituals. It’s complicated by Covid and the fact that my siblings all live in different states and that I joined a different religion than my mother’s decades ago. Some friends think I should create a ritual around retrieving her ashes, and not wait until September when my siblings and I plan to scatter them. Has anyone done this? Or have any ideas how to make it real for myself? I saw her body and held her hand after she passed but I was exhausted, and she had been barely responsive for days, so it just didn’t register. It was just surreal. I bought her a Christmas card a week later. I feel sad when I talk about it but have only cried once after seeing a funeral scene in a TV show. And I realized I need that ritual structure to help me. How can I get that in lockdown? I would love ideas.