August 22, 2006 08:00 AM
Adventures in Dreamland
I've been having some really funky dreams lately. In one, my husband and his friend were having a wrestling match at church (my dh wrestled in high school) and his friend broke my husband's leg. He was rushed to the hospital, and I found my son curled up in a ball on the floor of the church youth room crying "Brian broke Daddy's leg." Hmm. Not sure what all that meant.
So anyway, today I had a headache and laid down in the middle of the day for a short nap. When the dream began, my mother and I were shopping at a large mall. My mother was not as she is today--old, frail, suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia, unable to communicate, walk, or eat unassisted. She was as I remember her from ten years ago--taller than I am, vibrant red hair, feisty (okay, bitchy) and smart. We shopped for what seemed like hours, and she told me everything I tried on was too long for me, hideously ugly, and too expensive. It was just like old times.
I was enjoying the dream, then, all of the sudden, it started to change. My mother told me she was beginning to get tired, and that we'd have to stop so she could rest. Shortly after that, she told me she could no longer walk, and that I'd have to get her a wheelchair. I did, and began pushing her around the mall, still chatting with her, trying to get her to go back to the way she was earlier in the dream. But the joking and the sarcasm and the complaining about my clothing choices began to fizzle out, until she was finally not speaking at all. Little by little, she slipped down into her wheelchair, almost disappearing bit by bit before my eyes. An accelerated version of what has occurred over the past three years in real life.
When the dream began, I was happy that my subconscious had found a happy place to visit. A place that allowed me to remember what it was like to be the adult daughter of a healthy woman with a big mouth and even bigger opinions. But it ended much like things are for me today: my life as the adult daughter of a woman who is succumbing to a terrible disease. And while I accept that this is the place where we are now, it was nice to visit the past for a little while. Even if it was in my dreams.
