Mom

For the past year or so, I have been extremely fearful of my dead mother. I have dreams where an object symbolizes her and she speaks to me. I wake up with a low guttural scream, which wakes Hubby up. He shushes me back to sleep, but the image lingers. Once it was a ceiling fan spinning in a slow distorted speed yearning in my dead mother's voice: "I love you."

I walk around in darkness on my way to bed. I carefully step over toys and navigate around chairs. I expect to see her fleeting image at any moment. I never do, but I am still afraid. Then I convince myself that even if there was such a thing as ghosts, she would know how deathly afraid I am of her, and as my mother, she wouldn't choose to scare me.

It doesn't help that Moosie often talks to "ma-ma Pat" late at night. He chatters sometimes until midnight, "Hi ma-ma Pat. Good bye. Hi. I poopy pants. Good bye. Like my new bone [phone]!" I lay awake waiting for her to talk back.

I lost my mom when I was 10. And sometime between then and now, she has become my "mother." My dead mother. I was feeling really guilty about this, which is why I started this post. But I realize now, that it is not her that I fear, but my own mortality. I am in my young thirties, which is around how old she was when she died from breast cancer. I have two young children, which is exactly what she left behind. As a mother struggling with my own identity, trying to find my purpose, my direction in life, I see my mother through adult eyes. But she is my age. And it doesn't make sense.

It just doesn't make sense. And it truly frightens me.