This is not the first time I’ve dreamed this. I dreamt it two nights ago, or was it three? I get confused. I purposefully pushed it away and down so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Mom is back home with Dad from the hospital, and she’s lying in her bed at 912. I’m there in the front bedroom with Bill, and it’s later at night. Dad comes in, frantic, and says, “We have to take her to the hospital. She’s really bad.” So while he’s on the phone in the front room, I go back to her bedroom, and there she is, lying on the right side (her side), and she looks positively radiant. She’s wearing red, and her hair is thick and clean, and she’s got ruby earrings and a ruby necklace on.
“Hi Mom! You look so beautiful,” I tell her.
“I wanted to look really put together,” she answers.
She’s kind of falling out of bed, so I come over and try to pull her over so she’s not so tippy (like I used to do when she was in the hospital). I can’t remember what I say, but we both start to laugh (like we used to do when she was in the hospital), and I’m leaning over her, and we’re both laughing so hard she kind of slips out of bed, one leg in the air. I’m really upset that I let her fall, but she’s not hurt, and she says, teasing me, “Well, you’re no Bill Ekberg” (I don’t think Dad would’ve let her fall out of the bed). I help her get back in, then I figure it out and get curious.
“Hey, Mom, how can you be here if I was there when you die?”
I’m not saying she’s dead (I guess I am), but I’m just trying to make sense of it all in the Dreamtime. My waking and sleeping brains are so much the same that I guess my WB just took over.
“I guess I’m just having a hard time letting you go,” she said softly.
I jerk myself outright out of sleep, and roll over to Steve and put an arm around him. He sighs in his sleep and rolls toward me. I thought I was okay until I touched him. Then my shoulders started heaving.
“What’s wrong, honey?” the words were thick and slow out of his mouth. Poor guy.
I tell him the dream as he’s putting on his bathrobe and walking out the door to start his day.
“I’m sorry for waking you. Thanks for staying for a few minutes,” I say.
“No problem,” he says as he walks down the stairs to make coffee.
It is only 5AM. I went to sleep at midnight. I haven’t been able to get to bed very early lately. But it’s a beautiful sunrise this morning, the stretched out clouds reflecting bright white orange light up against their bellies, the light still diffused in that subtle gold through the trees, changing their color. Mom will have been dead a year a week from Friday at 12:40PM, but who’s counting. I keep thinking I get this, I’m over it, I’m doing well, then I hear her say, “I guess I’m just having a hard time letting you go” and I have a funny suspicion she’s not talking about herself.