I was looking over my bank account online and hopping from one foot to the other, contemplating if I should pay my cell phone bill or splurge on a rock concert. Granted, the concert is actually cheaper to pay for than my cell phone bill is at the moment, but then there's another concert on Sunday... *sigh* Flyleaf or Chevelle? I wanna go to both.

Yet I can't help feeling selfish in entertaining these thoughts. The Flyleaf concert falls on a Friday, this Friday, Good Friday, to boot. That means I'd have to leave work early (hence less hours, hence less pay next week, and I'm broke as it is, after all the funeral expenses, and the medical bills just keep pouring in) to go rock out, and even though 'Ama would be working on that day, all this week she works in the morning, 'cause it's Spring Break. So instead of taking off outta work early to be with her, I'd take time off to go somewhere without her. 'Cause I asked her to go, but of course she won't, because she's not really into rock. Especially not the type of rock I'm into. Hell, her idea of a rockin' good sound would be Brian Adams. And then if I went to the Flyleaf concert and the Chevelle concert, that would be worse, because Chevelle's concert is on Easter Sunday. We spend every Easter together as a family, all day. And if she can barely stomach Flyleaf, the Chevelle boys don't stand a chance.

And maybe, had this been last year, I would've gone anyway. Because there was always Dad to keep 'Ama company. But now he's gone, and we've got no one else here in the Valley. Nearest relatives would be the girls in Houston, and then the Dud in El Paso. Eight and thirteen hours away. I can't leave her alone, she'll cry. Believe me, she will. Things are just so much harder now that 'Apa's gone. Just yesterday she was crying for no reason, and I had to be the strong one, as usual, and it was hard as shit for me, because yesterday was March 16th, the anniversary of Marco's death. Six years now, man. I bought him a coke to replace the one that's been there forever and a day, and I took him some white roses. I tried to talk to him, but it was so hard with all the static of Mom's gloom. Afterwards we went to go see Pifas, and she sat on the grass of his grave with me and cried. She said it was for the grandkids that she wept, but I'm not too sure I believe her anymore. She wept so bitterly at his funeral, that I'm sure she wonders how things might have been different. Not only between him and the grandkids, or him and the Dud and me, but between them as well. She's confessed to me and the Dud that she had always dreamed of growing old with her spouse when she was a little girl. Having him die the way he did was a definitive way of killing her childhood dream, I think. It doesn't necessarily mean she was in love with him or anything.

So I can't leave her now. I can't be so selfish. And T�a Julia had said she might come over for Easter this weekend with my T�o and Edgar. Part of me hopes with all my heart that they do make it. I don't want to shoulder this burden on my own. (And on a more selfish note, if they do make it here, maybe I can go see Chevelle after all, and leave her behind with them.)