Dreaming

The Dream of the Sea of Heads - sometime in 2010, age 39

Last night I had a dream. I was in the ocean. The waves curled in front of me, forming a wake. In the crests of the wake I make out the forms of peoples’ heads bobbing. They all look the same. In the water, it is difficult for me to make out who they are. Is it Mom? Is it Jesus? Both have long dark hair. I choose to swim toward one of them. When I make the choice I am swept away into a story: the story of my life; the story of our lives.

My mother and I are together. We are both adults. My son is young. We are angry, fighting. She is herself as she was at that age: drinking, angry, belligerent. I am myself as I was at that age: sober, self-righteous, belligerent.

In this version of our life story, she raised me and my brother, divorced, and continues on her path, I on mine. She eventually dies of her own choices in front of my eyes, much the same way she did in reality. I am able to hold judgment. There was nothing I could do about it in the dream.

Suddenly I am back in the ocean with the heads again. I understand that I am to choose again. Excited at this possibility of another chance, I choose a different head to swim toward. I am swept away into another story.

There is my mom. We are us, yet we are different. My mom has had a lifelong partner, very sweet – instead of bitterly divorcing my father. She has given to me, to my brother, to her partner. She is 80 some odd years old now. She has always wanted to be a lawyer. She has a personal library that she wishes to get together into a room of shelves so that she can finally go to law school as she wished her whole life, according to this dream. But I can see that her body is so twisted with arthritis and age and pain that this will not be possible. Her tragically hopeful desire breaks my heart. She points toward the library of books and says, “Guess I’ll get busy now!” And stumbles into my arms, breaking in front of my eyes. I understand that she has a disease and a mortality that she could not control and is not at fault over, and that she gave what life she did have to her family and loved ones. I weep with regret for her as I hold her lifeless body.

I am in the ocean again, swimming with the heads. I understand that I am to choose again. Yet this time I also understand that no matter what choice I make, the story itself may be different but the outcome would be the same. My mom will die in front of my eyes. It is out of my hands.

And I have a new awareness. My mom’s truth is the same in both stories, just the circumstances differ. I am so blaming in the story that is similar to reality. I have so much of what she should have been like figured out. I know choices she should have made, and I have anger that she did not make them. And in the second story I have so much respect for my mother’s choices. She did so much for others and – strikingly in the second story I am the same as I am now: a much more compassionate, less judgmental person with a full heart of love due in large part to the love my mom had for me. In all versions, including reality, I am the same person. I had always felt that if my mother had made different choices, I would be a better person. I no longer am sure of this at all.

I am struck, too, with the realization that the real story of my mom is also that she had a disease and a mortality that she could not control and is not at fault over, and that she gave what life she did have to her family and loved ones. I weep with regret for my former short-sightedness.