A Dream

 “I’m so glad I’m talking with you today,” Rose stays, starting immediately. “I had this awful dream last night and it’s haunting me. The specifics are kind of vague at this point, but the feeling it left me with is very clear - horror. And it was like a horror movie or something out of a scary sci-fi movie, neither of which I ever watch. So it was like this force, not sure what the force was – people, aliens, I don’t know. I don’t know that I ever saw any particular thing or person, I guess that’s why I call it a force - that was going around and doing something to people so that they looked like their whole body had been burned and like instantly turned to ash and dissolved. Ugh! It makes me shudder just to think about it. And I guess I was going around trying to avoid this thing, but also to warn people, people I knew and cared about, that they were in danger. I think I had a better idea when I first woke up who some of those people were, but now I’d just be making it up. I keep shaking my head wanting that image of people dissolving into ash to go away.” She takes a breath. “So what do you think?”

“I can certainly understand how disturbing a dream it was,” I say, impressed with how Rose has managed to convey her horror so well over the telephone. “What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know. I was watching this TV show that had a cancer patient in it last night and it struck me how he seemed to be being eaten up from the inside out.”

Silence.

“I just keep feeling the horror.”

“Where does that feeling take you?”

“The horror? I guess the horror of the pandemic, of how many people have died. Oh! I guess that could be the force, the unseen virus, killing all these millions of people.” Pause. “But I wonder why I’d have the dream now. Things do seem to be getting better, at least for us. I’m vaccinated, most of the people I love and care about are vaccinated. Why now?”

“You said you thought there were specific people you were trying to save. Even if you have to make it up, who do you think some or one of those people were?”

“My mother comes to mind. She’s been dead for over 10 years now. She had a long life, almost 100 and she was pretty good until the last few years. She was ready to go. That made it easier for me, although it was still hard losing her. Painful, but not horrifying.”

Silence.

“What are you thinking about?”

“First I was thinking about this article I read about how deaths to overdose have skyrocketed during the past year. That feels like another force taking over people, especially young people. But then I ended up

someplace entirely different. I was thinking of the horror of growing up in my house, of my parents screaming and screaming at each other, of us cowering in the corner waiting for my father to start beating up on my mother or turning on one of us. He was definitely a force to be reckoned with, although he was a specific person, a tangible force, not a sci-fi character.”

“Maybe that made him even more scary. You couldn’t just turn off the TV.”

“That would explain why I was trying to save my mother. I was always trying to save my mother and feeling awful that I couldn’t.” Pause. “But still, I don’t know why I’d be dreaming about this now. This is an old story. Why now?”

Silence.

“Any thoughts about people being turned to ash and dissolving?”

“Cremation. Lots of cremations during the pandemic.” Pause. “The Holocaust. That was certainly a force of evil. Hitler, the gas chambers. But it doesn’t seem to be about that either. It felt more contemporary, like right now.”

“All right. Right now, what’s horrifying you, scaring you, threatening you?”

“Aging. I turn 65 next month. I know that’s not old these days, but I worry about aging, about who will take care of me if I’m ill or incapacitated in some way. And I suppose death itself feels frightening, the unknown, the aloneness. Death is a pretty scary, menacing figure. You think that’s what the dream’s about?”

“It’s certainly possible. And it’s also possible that it’s about all the things you’ve talked about today.”

“I suppose.”

“What are you feeling now?”

“Definitely not as horrified. Talking about it made it less scary. I feel more removed from it, like it’s something to look at and to figure out.”

Together Always

“I came to see you because I thought you would understand,” Mara begins. “When my father insisted I see a therapist I did a lot of research. I was looking for someone who understood loss. I didn’t read your whole book, but I read enough to know you believe it’s important to stay connected to the person who died, that it can provide comfort. My father just doesn’t get it. As he would say he’s ‘moved on,’ and that I need to too.”

Thoughts and questions swirl through my mind: Who died? Mara seems so young. How old is she? She’s the first person who’s come to see me because of my book. I wonder if she’ll be anything like the other young woman who started treatment with me many years ago after reading a book I co-authored. That woman was fragile, defensive, and crying out for love. 

Mara continues. “That’s all well and good for him. He can get another wife. I can’t get another mother. I know it’s been a long time since she died. But it’s not like I’ve stopped living. I did well in high school. I’m doing fine in college. The letters don’t interfere with my life.”

“The letters?” I ask.

“I’ve written my mother a letter every day since she died.”

“And when did she die?”

“Nine years ago, when I was twelve.”

Uh oh, I think. What I say is, “That must have been very hard.” 

Mara’s eyes fill with tears. Her eyes are big and brown and bring to mind a deer which, in turn, makes me think of another young woman I saw many years ago who covered her terror with rage. Whenever I saw her I thought of a deer caught in the headlights.

“It was terrible. She died of breast cancer. She seemed to be getting better. And then she was suddenly dead,” Mara says shaking her head. “I cried for days and days. For weeks, really. I couldn’t go to school because I couldn’t stop crying, I mean like continually. I don’t know how I got the idea to write her letters, but I did. I wrote to her every day. And I still do. It helped me stop crying.”

“What do you do with the letters, Mara?”

“I keep them. I have boxes and boxes of them. Some are pretty short, others are longer. Sometimes I tell her about my day or a problem I’m having. But I end them all the same way. I tell her we’ll always be together.”

My stomach tightens. It wasn’t only Mara’s youth that made me think of those two other young women. Mara is another fragile doe, holding onto her deceased mother as a drowning person clutches a life vest. 

“Can you tell me about your relationship with your mother, Mara? I ask.

She smiles, nodding. “We had a wonderful relationship. She loved me so much. She stopped working when I was born. She’d walk me to school, read me bedtime stories, kiss and hug me all the time. She was the perfect Mom.” She pauses. “Until she got sick.”

“When was that, Mara?”

“I was seven.”

“So she was sick for two years.”

“Yeah,” Mara says. Her doe eyes look downward. “It was really hard for her. She had to have a mastectomy and then chemo and radiation. It was awful.”

“You must have been really scared then. And pretty lonely too.”

“Yeah, I was really scared. I’m not sure I got it completely. I mean I knew she was really sick …”

“Did you worry about her dying?”

“I guess.”

“Did you spend time with your Mom when she was sick?”

“Depends. Sometimes I’d crawl into bed with her and it would be like always. She’d stroke my hair and tell me everything would be OK. She’d tell me we’d be together always.” She pauses. “Other times, other times she’d just want to be left alone.”

The room fills with sadness. I feel sad for Mara’s loss and for my losses as well. Mara was a dependent child when she lost the person she was closest to in the world. Is there also anger at her mother’s desertion? No doubt. But she is nowhere near ready to deal with that.  

Yes, I do believe that mourning is a process of taking in images and memories of the deceased which then provide a sense of connection with the person who is no more. But there’s more going on here for Mara. She is trying to keep her mother alive, compelled to make good on the promise that they be together always. 

 I suspect this will be a long, intense, and painful treatment.