Three Months

Mom when we were visiting Kassie in Springfield, MO, sometime in 2006.

I’m starting to believe more and more that Time is some kind of anomaly that the modest human brain can’t even begin to process, so it makes what it can of it, and thus, we experience Time in a perceivably measurable way.

Yesterday marked three months since my mom took her last breath. I haven’t been writing as much for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons was that I didn’t want to worry people, as I have not been doing well.

Almost every night I dream about my mom – sometimes more than once – and they are usually dreams of her dying. In various ways, sometimes from cancer, sometimes in a car accident, sometimes she simply fades from view.

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. My nights are filled with colorful, noisy expressions of my subconscious, and I often remember several dreams from any given night, although they do tend to fade as the day goes on.

When I was in high school, I had some very disturbing dreams about friends dying or leaving me. My therapist at the time suggested that I was probably anxious about upcoming changes and that in dream imagery, death can indicate a drastic change.

I don’t know what I believe about dream meanings, or if it matters, but I do know that my entire family has undergone the most drastic changes of our entire lives, because of the death of one person.

She was the center of our family. She was the president, receptionist, and director of the board. She planned everything, kept in touch with everyone, and kept us all going – while keeping herself going at the same time.

Sometimes it feels like it’s been years since it happened, and on certain days, I feel like it hasn’t happened yet. I still feel a sense of dread and anxiety about losing her. Not past-tense—not about having lost her¸ but about the process of actually losing her.

My therapist suggested I take time every day to “actively mourn” my mother. She said I should sit down in a deliberate manner and think of my mom and how I miss her. I have found this to be the most helpful advice anyone has sent my way since May. Sometimes I lie in bed with my teddy bear like a little kid and cry into my pillow, and sometimes I look through photos. I listened to some voicemails I saved (and thanks to my tech-savvy husband, will always have saved—on my computer, a thumb drive, and my external hard drive, as well as saved in my inbox) on my phone during one of these “active mourning” sessions, and that was still too hard. But one thing I’m grateful for is that in nearly every voicemail she ever left, even if it was just a “call me back!” message, she always told me she loved me.

The most useful part of “actively mourning” is that by giving myself permission to cry and be sad every day, I am not as worried about public meltdowns, or crying on friends’ couches at inopportune moments. Another perk is that through the practice of pulling myself out of the sadness and grief, I am better equipped to do so if a meltdown does occur.

In my head, three months feels like forever. A long, sad, lonely forever. In my heart, I’m not sure it’s even been three minutes. 

Mom in October 2006 when she came to visit me in Lincoln, Nebraska, shortly after I started going to school there. Frisco is the Railroad her father worked for.