Life and death

On a Saturday morning while I worked in our yard in VA, my brother called from ND with the news that Mom was unresponsive this morning.
Just before the airplane doors closed, my brother's text said, "they've called it."
How does a person go on living without their mom?  I'm not sure I can do that.
Mom was the pole that held the family flag, the spine from which all nerves emanated, the main stem, the theme, the force, the fire, the source. And now she's gone.
Dad has weakened dramatically since she departed on 3/30/13.  He has faded, failed, diminished, and slid.
And every day I have thoughts, questions and I just want to ask Mom.  The void is ridiculously large.  It's an ocean of space, loss, sadness.
  But she's gone.
It hurts so much worse than I imagined it would.  It hurts so bad.
Not sure what to do.

Harvest Happenings

The big trucks roll at high speeds down the 2 lane highways loaded with sugarbeets.  The drivers range from experienced CDL drivers to rookies still learning to manage the transmissions in the trucks they were introduced to only days ago.  There are more wheels under them than they've ever had before and more tons behind them than most of them can fathom.  For two weeks (or so) the 24 hour a day frenzy of people moving produce to market in North Dakota and Minnesota takes center stage to almost any other activity.   It truly takes a village to complete this harvest.  The mailman helps when he's done driving his mail route.  The barber helps after cutting hair all day.  The minister takes a shift and earns the respect of the locals and gains fodder for future sermans even though he's a less than average driver.  Family members fly "home" to support their family's farm at a time when every able bodied person supports this all out effort to complete the harvest.  The goal is to keep the sugarbeet harvestor lifting beets into the trucks.  The trucks need drivers... and that's where I come in.
I'm a farm girl and grew up driving tractors and trucks and loved every minute of it.  When I was young, I couldn't wait to get out of school to ride with my mom to watch the whole operation, whether it was grain, potato or sugarbeet harvest.  She was a pro and could drive in the fields, under the harvestor, back up the truck, raise the hoist and dump the truck wearing pretty lipstick on her smile the whole while.