13022013
http://efana.deviantart.com/art/Mother-150788540 |
Last night I had a dream about my
mother. We had just met yesterday and talked about a lot of things,
such as her father's war trauma and its effects on all of their
family, her youth and my early childhood years. It was a good
discussion and I enjoyed spending time with my mother, and I was left
looking forward to discussing these topics more.
In the dream my mother died. We were
together in a cellar of some kind where she suddenly started to have
some symptoms indicating that everything was not alright, although
she seemed calm in the midst of these physical symptoms. She was
laying down and I was tending to her. Suddenly I felt a very clear
physical touch sensation: her beingness under my hands simply
stopped. It was like all motion just vanished and everything about
her had become still in a split second. I instantly knew she had
died. I had not expected this. A slight panic was awakening in me. I
reached for my phone because I knew that in these situations one has
to call the emergency number. [At this point I remember being
half-awake for a moment, noticing my hand moving as if it was holding
a phone and dialing a number.] I was talking to the emergency centre
and trying to find a pulse. I didn't find one. Her body felt as
lifeless as any object. I then realized the phone had disconnected /
not connected at all because there was no reception. I noticed I was
in the cafe I work in and ran barefoot through the snowy road to a
shop across the street in which I knew there would be reception. I
found a corner in which my phone worked and called the emergency
number again. I told them she had had some symptoms and suddenly just
died. I was next to my mothers body again and I was touching her body
in panic, distress and ever-growing grief. I realized that death is
no big deal - that everybody dies and now she died and that's it –
but I was trying to suppress my grief under rationalization and it
kept growing. I started to move her limbs to get her out of the
awkward position she had died in. I crossed her hands and fingers on
her chest. I moved her legs next to each other, and I kissed her toes
and said “I love you” through desperation. I was saying goodbye
to her body because I would miss touching her. Finally I straightened
her head just a little bit – and I felt that the body I had been
touching reacted to my touch very slightly. She then opened her eyes
and came back to life. She claimed she had not been dead at all. The
last image of the dream was the paramedics standing around an empty
bed with my mother having escaped them (and for some reason the room
was full of cats, lol).
The first things I am noticing here is
that the sensation of touch was very prominent throughout the dream
and the element of a physical body was focal. I do not know what the
death of my mother represents to me. The loss of a stability point?
What is my mother to me – what does my mother represent of me? What
is her image a reflection of? Another thing that stands up are the
emotions I went through: the sense of loss, grief, panic and giving
her up. The best word I've found for it is in finnish: “hätä”.
At first I think that maybe I see that
which she still has to give to me – information about the past no
one else can provide – is running out and that soon she will be
somehow “useless” to me and thus will be “dead to me” –
which is of course not true, as every human being has value even if
there's nothing they could actively do to build the society. Her
working days may be over, but she has a lot to give to life in other
ways. But this interpretation would have to do with her and not with
me – my dreams are about me, right?
So, what kind of a stability point is
she to me? With her I always feel fully accepted, welcomed and
provided for – pretty much an archaic mother figure of open arms
and unconditional love. So with all this literally dying in my arms,
maybe it's about growing more independent, standing on my own, not
relying on the ones that raised me – not relying on the “mother
in me” as the patterns I have learned from her – the sins of the
fathers dying away. This would make sense to me as we also discussed
the subject of parents transferring their shit onto children and the
process of outgrowing that.
If my mother actually died, I would
feel like I had one less person to actually interact with. My mother
and I have mostly had a very good relationship and lately it's been
growing more intimate, and one thing I've greatly appreciated is the
fact that we are able to touch each other without reservation. This
might be one of the reasons the touch element was so prominent in the
dream – with her gone I'd have one less person to comfortably
touch. This is of course helpless bullshit where I believe some
people to be special because I accept and allow myself to feel
comfortable around them, secluding everyone else. But this indicates
that for me touching her is still a special thing. Which, I think, is
not surprising, as most of us grow kind of attached to our mothers,
lol.
So, yeah, all of this is really
interesting, but what am I getting out of this? What is it that lays
hidden? What am I not facing? I feel like I'm getting nowhere.
A point that I'm now noticing is that
in the dream I was distressed because the death was so sudden and I
had to give my mother up so suddenly – I was in panic because I
knew the ambulance was coming and that she would soon be taken away
and that I'd never have a chance to touch her again, even though I
knew that all that was left was the carcass and not who she was. Am I
seeing myself here? The death of me? Fear of change, also, for change
being so unexpectedly fast. The death of a past me who has been
living as my mother.
But what the heck was that
resurrection? Once I was almost finished saying my goodbyes she came
back to life. Like retreating at the last minute, “I changed my
mind, I don't want to do this”. But she said “I was never dead”
even though I knew she was, no one can be that still without being
dead. Maybe I have thought my mother-self to have died but have
actually returned to being my mother-self at the brink of letting go?
This would, again, make sense.
Right, so I would need to learn my
mother-self as the mind-construct I have adapted from her – locate
it and map it out – for it to not resurrect. Otherwise I will keep
on time-looping, thinking it to have died only to find it alive
again.
--
I searched for support and read the
following article: Mothers as manifested regret. I will continue with
this tomorrow, because I now kind of realized there's a buttload of
stuff here I need to dig into.
Cool Emmi! I guess the touch represents the establishing of our equal and one relationship with our body/the physical 'in the small' and humanity 'in the big'. Thanks for sharing.
VastaaPoistacool perspective, thanks for sharing!
Poista