She’s not dead in my dreams. She’s never dead in my dreams. Sometimes she’s a ghost, but she’s never really dead. She’s always responsive… or ignoring me, but nonetheless she’s active.

But they’re always about death. In the first few weeks, I most often dreamed that she was a ghost or just too busy to talk to me — in these dreams, I knew she was dead. She wouldn’t talk to me in these dreams. I begged and pleaded for her to talk with me, but I could never quite reach her.

Now, nearly six months later, we catch her before she chooses fatality. Sometimes it’s just me and Mom. Sometimes my husband, Dad, and siblings are there too. She talks to me in these dreams. I/we are always trying to talk her out of it — to talk her out of dying. To beg her to stay. But they all end the same — I wake up. I remember she’s gone and she’s never coming back. Sometimes that brings tears to my dull eyes, sometimes it cultivates anger and protest, and sometimes it steals my breath and replaces it with anxiety.

I watched Where the Crawdads Sing the day before my Mom died, and I remember feeling so comforted when the main character’s mom walks out of her life forever. It’s a main plot of the movie — trying to figure out how a mother could leave her young. I remember thinking my Mom would never.

Ha. Isn’t life ironic like that? It’s so cruel.

* * * *

This has been of the hardest weeks to do anything. To get out of bed, to go to work, to want to do anything. I’d rather turn my phone off, ditch work, and cut myself off from the rest of the world for a couple of weeks and just sleep.

Scott woke up the other night to the sound of me screaming: he reported that I was staring at our fan, shrieking. One of the strangest part about night terrors is that one won’t recall the dream whatsoever, and people experiencing night terrors won’t typically wake up on their own. They’re not very common for adults, but almost always caused by immense stress. It’s unsettling to wake up to the sound of yourself howling in horror and shaking violently.

And then you have to go to work the next day, put on your best “I’m okay” face and complete whatever task is due by whenever deadline, half alive. A shell of what once. A candle burnt to its wick, melting whatever potential was once there.

The closer we get to the Christmas, the less I want to get out of bed. But I have end of year deadlines, places to be, things to do. So we trek on, one abysmal step at a time.

* * * *

I look forward to dreams now. They’re the one place I get to interact with my Mom, even though they’re just visages from my broken heart and my weary mind. Ever so briefly, it feels like she’s with me again, even if the dream is sad and dark and heavy. At least I “saw” her, at least I could spend just a few minutes with her ghost.