Last night another dream about my parents. So far, they have been dreams of ordinary life--peaceful subjects likely created by my subconscious, as many dreams are. What I have also heard, though, is that the dead can come to us in dreams. I am beginning to believe this. It happened after my mother died, and it is happening now. Our family has had rather tumultuous times in our history, and it feels like these dreams are coming to soothe me, or as an apology in some cases. I dream of my Nonni's house when I am deeply stressed out. I can smell her perfume, her shampoo, see the light coming through the windows, and feel the carpet on my bare feet as I go up the stairs. Nonni is never in the dream, though. In the dreams with my parents, the scenarios are realistic but not real. A mother taking her daughters shopping. My parents embracing each other, shutting the world out. My parents enjoying a night out at a restaurant, late meeting Karl and I at the house. These images are so gentle, the dreams come to me and I embrace them. They also bring me questions. Is it just my mind doing this as part of the grieving process, or is there a spiritual deliverer to ease my grief? I am the over-analyzing type, and always want The Answer. I might end up having to choose my Answer.
I've recently been contacted by an old friend of my mother's. I say "old" rather then "longtime" because I am just learning the extent to which they kept in touch over many years. Rita and my mother were girlhood friends. She found me on Facebook, and started sharing all these memories of herself and my mother. They had wonderful times together, and Rita shared so many things about the mother that I never really knew. She gave me the person I longed for my mother to be. The one I always wondered about. The one my father fell in love with. And it is *this*mother that's coming to me in dreams. Not the mother with whom I chose to sever ties about a year before she died. Her abusiveness forced me to choose this path without her. By then she was already lost behind the iron curtain of vodka and starvation. I don't know how much Rita knows about my mother's later life. I know she is reading this blog. Rita has alcoholism in her family, so knows a little of what it might have been like.
So while this is a blog about the journey surrounding my father's passing, it now includes, thanks, to Rita, a bit more about my mother. Her journey, prior to the Verrilli family. How did we change her? Did we make her so unhappy that she drank? I know enough about alcoholism that it is more complicated than that--alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful. Some of you may recognize that language.
Rita's messages are helping me heal. I love the bright, caring young woman she describes in her emails and the fun she had with a dear friend who loved her unconditionally. I am sad that she may not have known *we* loved her unconditionally, too, as children. I am devastated that she may not have known my father loved her unconditionally until the day she died. I cannot even bear to think she may not have cared. Rita's messages are equally painful, though, because I feel doubly-grieved. I knew when my mother died the hopes of ever reviving a relationship with her were over. My choice. The most difficult choice I've ever made. I now call in to question some things about which I felt very secure. I told my mother I would not speak to her when she was drunk. This ended up being the last thing I said to her. It was a necessary choice and I wish I hadn't felt compelled to make it. Reflection is a painful and useful tool.
I am so, so, SO glad Rita found me. She's encouraged me to dig deeper to see my mother differently. I think it could only be she who could help me in this way. I don't know if there's a divine reason she found me now, and opened my eyes, but I think there might be. I don't know if I want to enter into a longer relationship with her, but I am open to the Universe guiding me. And if she is a guide on the path to my mother, then I will take her hand.
About Me
- Catherine
- In this blog I have created a haven, a place I allow my deepest emotions to go and sit. I can write easily about what I’ve accomplished. This biography I can recite in my sleep. But I’ve always written poetry and in diaries since I was a teenager. I continued to write poetry in my journals, and not until 2006 did I show them to anyone. I generally write every day, at the present in memoir form. I haven’t written poetry since my mother died in January, 2007. I didn’t write at all between her death and the death of my father three years later in January, 2010. On my father’s birthday in March, 2010, I began this blog, to honor my father and to help me grieve. But I also desperately needed to write, and this stream of conscious style emerged. I needed to find my organic voice.
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