I didn’t dream about my mother after she died—not for many years. I’d always been a vivid dreamer, and sometimes a lucid dreamer. At night, a day gone wrong would right itself. Long ago pets would visit and keep me company. I would fly, literally and figuratively. But the one thing I wanted most, to see my mother, to talk to her and hear her voice, eluded me.
So, it came as a huge surprise when, a few years after moving to a new province, Mom appeared in a dream.
It was an ordinary dream, just everyday events. We were making dinner while my children, long since grown in the waking world, played at the far-end of the kitchen.
Mom began to appear regularly in my nightly pantomimes of real life. I realized one morning, as I woke from one such dream, that, though the situations varied, the dreams always took place in British Columbia, a place she had never lived. Puzzled as to why, I determined to ask her the next time I saw her. I wasn’t crazy. I knew Mom wasn’t really there, but, talking with her was like exploring my own psyche. After all, I had created this version of her.
Mom graced my sleep three nights later. As she sat in my recliner, feet up, knitting, I asked, “Mom, why are you here?”
“What do you mean, dear? I live here.”
“I mean here, in B.C. You never lived here. I thought if I dreamed about you, it would be at our old house in Ottawa.”
Mom took the news that we weren’t in Ottawa anymore with equanimity. She shrugged, thought for a moment, then, smiling, answered. “Because you held me too tightly in Ottawa. You were so tied up inside about losing me, that I couldn’t come out.”
The answer stunned me. But it made sense. After Mom died, I desperately wanted to see her again. I tried to dream about her. It wasn’t until I had moved west and built a new life in a new place that I had finally been able to let go of her. The memories of her had become sweet, no longer fraught with grief. I had stopped clinging to them, instead allowing them to come at odd moments, when something would remind me of her. They now brought a smile instead of tears.
“But why B.C.,” I wondered out loud.
“Maybe,” my wise mother-self said with a familiar tilt to her eyebrow, “you’ve only let go of me here. Maybe it’s time to take my ashes home and let me go there as well.”
The first line of this flash came to me as I was falling asleep. They so often do! So, I dutifully turned the light on, wrote it down, along with a few ideas that had come along with it, and went to sleep.
I’ve only recently started dreaming about my mom, who died at the end of 2015. I’m not a lucid dreamer and I didn’t desperately want to dream about Mom, though I welcome the dreams. Maybe my subconscious was talking to me, but I don’t think so. Beyond the move to B.C. and the relatively recent onset of the dreams, my story in no way reflects that of the protagonist’s.
In any event, I hope you enjoyed this little flash. I love writing for you all, and especially love hearing from you. So please, leave a comment!
I've never dreamed about my dad but he's always in my days. He comes to me in his words of wisdom, sayings that are sometimes silly or sometimes wise. I wouldn't bother to try to count often I start a sentence with the words "well, as my dad would always say". And I love it. It always makes me smile 💖
I love the idea of exploring our psyches by chatting with dream versions of parents!