Present tense

I talked about my mother in the present tense today. "My mother says that," I told someone who knows full well that my mother is dead. "My mother used to say," I corrected myself, "that that would be a funny way to go, getting hit by a cookie truck." I talked about it a little too much, trying to quell my discomfort about forgetting that she's dead. "Just think," I said to my supervisor and coworker, with whom I was sitting down to have a quick meeting, "everyone would be snickering about it at the staff meeting." I had been trying to explain why I was late to our discussion; I was documenting procedures that only I know how to do.