TheBanyanTree: I had a dream

[Monique Colver]

I had a dream, and when the alarm went off it still felt so real that I
could barely wake up. My Mother was there, in my dream, but it wasn't a
setting I was familiar with. It was a house, at first, and there were other
family members there, and we were caring for my Mom, who had cancer and was
dying. In that respect it was like life itself, except in the past.

Mom was cheerful about her looming death. This was like real life too. She
didn't show us any regret or sadness, she talked bravely about her new
adventure, and we fluttered around her in our attempts to make her
comfortable. It was all we could do, you see, and there was nothing else to
be done for it.

Mom and I went somewhere, for some reason, one of those places and reasons
that pop up in dreams and make sense at the time, but in the light of full
consciousness are meaningless, and can't ever be recalled. It didn't matter.
I was taking Mom somewhere and making her comfortable. As we waited for
drinks and food at the counter of a deli the people behind us grew
impatient. I'd asked for tea for Mom, and the owner gave me a tea bag and a
small amount of hot water, not nearly enough to fill the cup. I asked for
more. Our supplies were mounting on the counter, and the people behind us
grew more impatient and started making sounds. And this is odd, but one of
the sounds they made was that they were servicemen and servicewomen, from
the Air Force no less, and who were we to make them wait?

Who were we? Mom wasn't there with me. I'd had her sit down so she could be
more comfortable.

Who were we? I told them I'd been in the Air Force myself, thank you very
much, and so had my Mom, thank you very much (the first part is true, the
second part is not, but when I went into the Air Force my mother, though
she'd never said a word against it, fretted and worried, as mothers will.
She worried about me, not knowing exactly how I was. It was long ago, and
our exchanges were by mail, not email, so there was a delay, like the time I
had surgery and without knowing what was going on she'd called the Red
Cross, who called my commander, who sent the first sergeant out to my house
in rural Germany where I was recovering from my surgery to tell me to please
get in touch with my mother before she drove them all bonkers with her
questions. So, in that sense, my mother was also in the Air Force, wasn't
she?

Anyway, that seemed to quiet them down. For added emphasis, I told them,
"And my mother has cancer and is going to die soon, so just shut up!"

That worked. That word has so much power over us, doesn't it?

Later I looked for a comfortable place for us to sit, out of the sun. Mom
poked around at a bed that was part of an outdoor display, but it was all
cushy and soft, like a water bed, and far too much movement for her, with
cancer. The salesman tried to sell her on the benefits of the bed, and Mom,
in her bathrobe, told him it was just too soft for someone who was going to
die soon, and she said it with a smile and a twinkle in her eye that
indicated she knew what a fine joke it was, and he let up.

We found a place to sit, and we drank our tea and ate our snacks, and we
talked about life and death and the price of fruit, or something equally
innocuous.

And so when the alarm went off I woke up reluctantly, wanting to stay with
my Mom, knowing that when I did wake up she'd be gone, and has been gone
since November. But I dragged myself awake, knowing that Mom wouldn't want
me to stay when I had so much of life to get through, and there's so little
time to waste.



-- 
Monique Colver