A Daily Bliss: Freaking In My Sleep

Recently I woke suddenly thinking I heard my Mother calling, urgently, "Becky!"

The next night I woke from a dream that she had come back to life. I will spare you the ugly details but it was awful and wonderful and miraculous. She was sitting up in bed and talking away and making lists and asking for things, sort of like she did the two times at the Emergency Room in Cambridge when we thought then that we had lost her.

I have been thinking a lot about her life, how active and alive and interested and interesting she was. While at Autumn she surprised me one day by saying how much she liked Michelle Obama and what she was doing for the childhood obesity problem with her school lunch initiatives. At the James she asked me to bring her the book by Hilary Clinton called "It Takes a Village". During that time she was already having vision problems and had no attention span for listening, either. Then there was never a time I could have brought it to her that she would have been able to read or listen to it. Her mind was still sharp in other ways but not for absorbing information except in short doses.

I never told you this story but it's a good one. One evening at Autumn at bedtime I read her a short story from one of about twenty books in her room, some she had picked up from their library, some she had asked for from home, some that were new gifts. Well, the story that night, much to my dismay as I read, was about a woman whose husband had died. He appeared to her in a dream that comforted her greatly.

At the end, we sat silently for a moment, then Mom asked me, "What did Nana say to you that time when you saw her over at Pap's house?"

She was referring to a dream I had the summer after Nana (Grandma Miller) had passed. I had forgotten that I was at Pap's when I dreamed it. They lived two houses from us for a brief time before she died suddenly of leukemia. I had graduated high school and was working nights at a pancake house to save money for college. To get away from the kids' noise I had asked Pap if I could sleep in his upstairs bedroom. That's where I had the dream Mother remembered.

In the dream, Nana had walked into the pancake house one night with Pap and I exclaimed, "Nana! I thought you were dead!" She looked radiant and beautiful, and she replied, "No, I'm all better now. I'm healthy. I'm fine now!"

That was all of the dream, just that. But it comforted me because I had worried so much about her and was so appalled when we buried her, to think of her there in the ground, still.

So that night at Autumn, I replied to Mom,"She said that she was fine now, that she wasn't dead, but that she was all better now."

Mom nodded thoughtfully but didn't say anything more.

That was as close as she ever came to talking to me about her death. She constantly said, "It's in God's hands now. Only he knows what will happen."

I asked Dad once if he had ever seen her express any fears about it and he said, "No, only once at Autumn one evening she cried and it was about how much she loved me and was going to miss me." He said, "I've never seen anyone face death like she did, with absolutely no fear or questioning." Chris said once that Mother seemed to have been given a coping mechanism along with the other changes in her brain and she wished she had one, too. Sometimes it was harder for us to watch than it was for Mom to experience.

What a blessing she was! What a life and death she showed us!

I have been thinking a lot about what to do with my "second act" as some people call retirement these days. What can I do to rededicate myself to some worthy goal, to get back to the altruism and volunteerism of my youth? And should I leave Information Technology to do it? Could I be a program manager for a non-profit organization? Would that pay the mortgage on this house I am stuck in? I know Mom's vote was always that I seek something less stressful, more healthful for me.

I am thinking about changes, even as soon as when this contract with Cedars Sinai is finished in mid-April. I do very good work for them. Especially a nurse in Infection Control is thrilled to have my experience and work for her. But is this my mission? How do I be a Big Sister again on this schedule? How can I matter to kids who need good mentoring? That is probably where my best gifts lie.

Until I figure it out, I am just taking some quiet time to heal myself, my sleep, and my torn-up home.