Thursday, June 25, 2009 – 9:36am – Couch York City, Burnaby, BC
I just woke up from the most intense dream that I’ve had about my Mom since she died. I wanted to get it written down before I forgot about it. Naturally, I’m sure that it will sound totally disjointed and nonsensical when I write it down, but I felt such intense emotions in that dream – such desperation to prevent what was going to happen and such profound love for my Mom.
In the dream (as always if I dream about someone who has died and I see them alive in a dream), I knew my Mom was going to die. In fact, it was the day before she died. I saw her and Emily was there and we were picking her up from some sort of hotel or something. At one point, my Mom had a plate with chocolate cake on it and I asked Emily if I should not let her eat it, because maybe that was part of what made her have another heart attack (ie: high blood sugar from eating sweets). I was desperate to do anything I could to stop it from happening. When we were leaving the hotel, I told Emily “Oh, shit…we have to tell her” because the house had already been emptied and Emily was living there, so we couldn’t bring her back to the house without telling her what was going on.
At one point before that, Mom and I were sitting outside the Denham Post Office and Heather was there. She saw my Mom and she started crying, because she knew what was going to happen, too.
So, I was walking with my Mom outside and I told her that she was going to die and, somehow, by this time, it was within a few hours. I told her that I didn’t make it back from Vancouver in time to see her before she died and that I saw her body and she was dead. She was totally freaked out – as anyone would be if they were being told they were going to die, I imagine. She started saying she might as well kill herself if she was going to die anyway and I begged her not to say that. There was an open cemetery plot full of water and she was going to fall into it face down. God, how awful! (As an aside…I think I dreamed that part because I read something in Jane Fonda’s bio where she was talking about this guy showing her a slideshow of images of Vietnamese people and one was them working in rice paddies and it said that they bury their dead in those fields and their bones fertilize the land and they believe they take the strength of their ancestors.)
Then, Mom and I were hanging onto one another really tight and telling each other how much we loved each other. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “I love you.” with such a sense of sadness, but also a sort of acceptance of the inevitable.
At one point, I was looking straight into her eyes and said something to the effect that one person (being gone, I guess?) is not important. It’s the love that people have for each other lasts. In the dream, I said it like, “One person – not important. It’s the love people have that lasts.” Again, sort of gets lost in translation when it makes perfect sense in the dream.
I am just so tortured by her being gone. I still can’t believe it, almost 7 months later. I miss her so intensely, I can feel it in my soul. I cry so hard sometimes, just trying to expel the pain. And, after I cry it does help a little for a short while. But, then it comes back again.
I was thinking last night that I feel like I’m living someone else’s life. That all this is not really happening to ME. Isn’t it interesting how hard the brain will work to deny such a painful reality.
Angelica called and woke me up from the dream and it was hard to concentrate on talking to her. Have to work on the PS Wire thing now.