Day 145: Death and rebirth of the Mother in me

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.

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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.