Grading and the rest...

My Mom had a heart attack yesterday and she is presently in a coma. She is not expected to survive. I am grading final papers. I get updates on the phone with my brother. It is as if everything is happening on the surface of some distant moon. I still send my usual chipper and/or cajoling e-mails to student stragglers to get their papers in before the deadline. I spent most of yesterday grading twenty or so finals and staring into space and feeling weird, sometimes with my face star-spangled with ambivalent tears. I am tired and distressed and distracted.