I had a dream last Friday morning. It was pretty weird, as dreams generally are. I remember very clearly that I was floating on a raft on the ocean, K was on another raft nearby, attached somehow. Later in the dream, other people joined us, like the crew of a fishing boat, and as more people came on board, the rafts turned somehow into a big houseboat. We were in a storm, had been through the whole dream, except one part, where K and I were on our rafts watching our cat, Boo, chase playfully across the surface of the still-as-glass ocean, chasing something. We thought nothing of this, as in the dream, we were both very aware of the common knowledge that all cats can walk easily and gracefully on the surface of the ocean.
After we were on land, a group of people gathered, maybe thirty of them, for a group picture. It seemed to be some kind of family reunion, and someone handed me a camera and asked if I would take the picture. I said sure, although I wondered why they hadn't asked me to be in the picture, too, since the person who gave me the camera was Cousin E. E is an elderly relative, almost 90, and more like an aunt than a cousin, but she is my cousin, on both sides, in fact. Over 60 years ago, she introduced her first cousin on one side to her second cousin on the other side, and they became my parents. So I am related to nearly everyone Cousin E is related to. But I was not asked to be in the picture.
While they were all moving into position, my cell phone rang. I handed the camera to K and looked at it. I could see that there was a number in the caller ID, I could see it clearly, and even repeated it out loud in the dream. I didn't recognize the number, but I took the call.
It was Shirl. It was my mother. I could hear her voice clearly, hear everything she said. I listened in utter amazement. She was talking to me on the phone, but I knew that she was dead.
She was asking me what I thought of the American Idol final, and telling me that she had liked both Clay and Ruben very much all along, and hadn't really cared who won. I didn't know what to say, or do. I wanted to listen to her voice, but I had to ask: "Where are you?" In her apartment, she said. "Is Daddy there?" I asked. She paused. "He's here somewhere, I think," she said.
I wanted to yell into the phone: "He's dead! Don't you know he's dead? Don't you know that you're dead, too?" But I thought that if I didn't say that, it wouldn't be true, and they wouldn't really be dead.
I woke up, and I thought, huh, I just talked to Shirl on the phone in a dream, that was cool. I put on my bathrobe and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I started to brush my teeth, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought, "I just heard her voice on the phone," and I looked at my face and I could hear her voice again and I knew that I couldn't pick up the phone and call her and say, "I just had the weirdest dream."
I looked at my face in the mirror and saw that I was crying, like I'm crying now, typing.
One year ago today I became an almost-50-year-old motherless child. Sounds pretty dramatic, huh. Sometimes, it is.
I've said it before, I don't miss the last eight years when she was slowly dying and always in pain and lost anyway to the bipolarism and OCD. But I miss the mommy I used to have before.
One year. I still don't get it, I guess.
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I'm watching MASH marathon
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