I dreamt about my mom last night. It’s been awhile since she’s visited me in my dreams. Her appearances come in waves- I’ll see her every night for a week or two, then she’ll disappear for a month or more. She always seems to show up when I need her the most.

In my dream we were in the house that I grew up in, the house where I watched my mom die of cancer two weeks before I gave birth to Kiana, my daughter.

The memories of being there with her during that time are still in my body. I feel a deep pang, from my heart to the pit of my stomach. In my last lucid conversation with my mom, she told me that she knew that she was never going to meet her grand-daughter, the baby in my belly who was almost ready to be born.

Over the past few days I have felt my familiar and uncomfortable angst begin to well up. So many projects- so little time. I’ve questioned if I’m just spinning my wheels. My list is piling up, but at times I’m not even sure what I’m trying to accomplish.

I woke up in the middle of the night with that clenching 3am dread- every latent anxiety surfaces and is magnified without the distractions of my daytime routine. My mind raced from topic to topic- I thought about the upcoming play I will be performing in and the book that I’m working on, and quickly convinced myself that I would fail miserably at both endeavors.

I ruminated about my husband being out of town, and wondered how I would possibly get through the next few weeks without him. I contemplated my grocery list and realized that I had nothing to pack in Shane’s lunchbox. I thought about the audition I had yesterday and counted all the ways I fucked it up. Then I chastised myself for being a shitty friend because of all the phone calls I hadn’t yet returned. 

Everything got clumped together into a mosh-pit until I convinced myself that my entire life was out of control. I wondered why I couldn’t be one of those people who actually sleeps soundly at night. A person who has the capacity to feel some peace. By now I should know better then trying to solve “The Problem Of My Life” at three in the morning!

“The goal is not inner peace!” I heard the words of my favorite Rabbi, Mark Borovitz. “The goal is to struggle with dignity.”

The problem is, my struggles haven’t felt very dignified lately. I’ve been snappy with my children and unable to live in the moment. I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself with my husband out of town. I can’t find a good song on my iPod or a decent outfit in my closet. I’ve been procrastinating some challenging writing assignments and waiting for inspiration (which never works), rather then being disciplined and working my way through the creative blocks.

Why so much angst, I wondered again. My life is blessed. My children are healthy, my husband is employed, I can walk to the ocean from my house. I should have the capacity to enjoy my life and stop trying to manage and control everything.

There I go again- now it’s 3:17 am and all I’ve managed to do is beat myself up for how I think “should” be feeling… and, oh yeah, note to self- I’m out of bananas and string cheese!

I thought about my children again. I wondered if I was doing enough or doing too much. I feel incredibly responsibile for their physical and emotional well-being, as I should! But being solely responsible for them when my husband is out of town (as he often is) freaks me out, because in those moments it seems like the power to fuck them up completely rests in my hands.

I remembered the breathing exercise my yoga teacher taught me.”Breath in so, breath out hum.” I’m generally not a fan of chanting mantras, but I was so desperate to shut my brain off that I was willing to try anything. I tossed and turned and breathed.

So. Hum.

After what felt like hours, I fell back asleep. My mom quickly appeared in my dream. She looked just like she did before she went into hospice care, with her cute, highlighted haircut and soft make-up. She was wearing a flowing, linen dress. In other dreams, she is the mom of my childhood with long, bouncy, dark, hair, lots of eyeliner, and blue jeans.

While the details of my mom-dreams are different, the theme is always the same. We’re spending time together and I suddenly realize that she hasn’t really been dead for the past two-and-a-half years, rather she has been on vacation, or even weirder, she’s been staying in her friend’s basement. I’m so relieved that it was all a misunderstanding, and I feel such joy and gratitude to have her back in my life.

I love our relationship in these dreams- free of any inherent mother/daughter conflict. Perfectly simple and easy. I can talk to her about anything and she is wise and non-judgmental.

My mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table in the home I grew up in. I kept marveling at how she was finally back in my life, and how horribly mistaken I had been over the past few years. I told her, “I knew you weren’t really dead!”

Then, we were walking up a hill in my hometown and she was holding my hand. She smelled like her favorite perfume, White Musk from the Body Shop. I told her how much I loved her and missed her. She was smiling and very calm. I had a moment of feeling completely connected to her before she began to fade. She told me she loved me so much but she had to go. She said she was just visiting me again- just making sure I was OK.

When I awoke I wasn’t sure if she was dead, alive or somewhere in-between. The early morning sun filtered through the ficus trees outside my bedroom window and I heard Shane’s little feet padding into my bedroom.

And for one moment, I felt something that maybe, just maybe, resembled peace.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 3:22 pm and is filed under 1. Angst Mom Essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.