Things That Matter To No One

I don't know what my mother's last words were.

I'm not 100% sure I know what my last words to her were.

I think it was "I love you."

I dreamt last night that she was picking me up at school. High school. Where I walked around the front yard looking at the memorials (that don't exist) to students (who did exist) who died. My mind invented names and dates and life stories and memorials for these children, who weren't children in the dream of course because I was a child as well.

Often now, when I dream about my mother, it is not as it was for the first four years: she is not deathly ill, she is not resurrected somehow, she is not dead. But often there is some feeling, some aura around her that says with virulent warning: "Something bad is in her. Something bad is following her. Something bad comes with her."

She is never happy when I dream of her. Always there is some argument, some negative energy, some fight going on between us. Most often I feel much as I did when we were in these situations when I was a teenager: that I am being treated unfairly, that I have no way out, that I am not respected, that I am not loved as much as she says she loves me when she is having a good day.

I separate, in my mind, my mom from my mother.

My mom loves me. She went to the Summerlands. She is there, resting and reviewing and keeping an eye on all of us until she is ready to come back. She is as eternal as we all are, and we will meet again.

My mother was a difficult, complicated woman who died far sooner than she should have, far sooner than I ever expected. She left scars on me, wounds so bound up in love that I am still not right and never will be. She hurt me in ways that cannot heal. She loved me, but she also resented and made no efforts to hide that. She damaged me. She is dead, and I will never see her again.

I don't know why my brain chooses to show me my mother, and make me relive the worst of the feelings she inspired.

Shouldn't my brain want me to see Mom?