July 13th, 2023

She was walking towards me in my dream as if I was replaying her seventieth birthday but this scene never occurred. Same outfits, not the same setting or players, and yet the same outcome. She swept me into her arms and pressed my cheek against her own. I could feel feel the warmth of her embrace for a moment only to be pulled awake to someone touching my shoulder.

“Mama, I’m sorry. I can’t sleep… I need help.”

My feet swung from the bed and I went into auto-parenting, “It’s ok, honey…we’ll figure it out. Let’s go to the kitchen…”

Soon she was settled back into bed. I waited in the hallway for any other sounds for a minute or two. There was none save the breathing of others. Staggering back to bed with little hope of sleep I checked my phone to see that it was just before three in the morning. Not an unusual hour for me to be roused yet bothersome all the same. The Clash song, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”, came to mind as I struggled with trying to make myself return to sleep or laying in the dark waiting for the day to start. Somehow during this internal battle my body decided for me and I returned to sleep. Dreaming when you had no intention of sleeping is just as jarring as nodding off when you should be awake.

It made the nightmare all the more startling and vivid. I dreamt that my children had disappeared and no one could remember who they were. Only my recollection and the photos I kept showing to friends and strangers were my proof. Except even those that knew them seemingly had amnesia of their association with them. My feverish dash from house to house in our immediate neighborhood culminated with me driving all over the city to find them. I came home in utter exhaustion and defeat only to open the door and discover that my home was nothing that I remembered. It was full of old belongings and those of my mother’s jumbled in piles and stacks throughout every room. There was a dim light in the center of the dining room. As I neared it I recognized the battered dollhouse that my mother had once found for one of her grandchildren from a yard sale. The light was flickering and I reached in to fix it only to have the bulb fall off into my hand like a ripe plum. I screwed the bulb back into place, expecting a light, and felt someone behind me move closer as the darkness closed in around me.

I awoke feeling more exhausted than when I originally went to bed with the nightmare hanging in my mind. It occurred to me that the dream was not that unlike the feeling of grieving in isolation. The urgency of wanting people to acknowledge your panic, your pain, the shock of loss only to be turned away in dismissal as if none of your experience, or their existence, mattered. I felt someone staring at me and I rolled over to see Owen holding his iPad proffered up for me to enter the code, “Good morning, mama…I waited until six.”

“Hi, baby, thank you,” I fumbled with my hands and he helped by steadying the tablet, “Math cards or bridge building?”

He smiled, “Race cars!”

“Ok,” I wasn’t going to dampen his enthusiasm. I layed in bed and listened to him line up the ingredients for his sandwich making as he sang a Lizzo song, “I do my hair toss, check my nails, baby can you feel me? Feelin’ good as “heck”…”

I smiled at the improvisation to amend the song and tried to push away the concerns over his safety in being unsupervised in the kitchen as I neared the doorway. I peaked around the corner to watch him and spotted him dancing as he lined up paper bags in a row for his sandwiches. A new ritual of his that I wanted to encourage. He felt so very proud of himself to make his sandwiches and I was glad to clean up the crumbs afterward. Such a trivial trouble for such a great achievement indeed. I found myself tearing up and sat down at the dining room table suddenly overwhelmed with grief that my mother didn’t live long enough to see such things. How delighted she would have been for him.

Owen and I were at the grocery store just the other day and an elderly man was panhandling at the entrance. I’ve seen him walk down to the liquor store and hang out before. I’m not inclined to give him money to drink but yesterday he asked Owen and I as we walked in. I politely explained that I didn’t have any cash and we entered the store. No sooner had we found a cart that Owen was patting my hip.

“Can I give him money?”

I dug it out of the bottom of my purse. A lousy quarter and a dime was all I could find. I watched from inside the store as Owen walked back out only ten freet from me to give the money to him and patted him on the gentleman on the back.

The guy looked back at me and smiled in astonishment. That smile tore through me. It reminded me of what my mother had always said about those that needed help, “That’s somebody’s baby.”

My son came back buoyant and confident, “I’ll push the cart, mama!”

I knew that many heels and ankles would thank me for intervening, “Let’s do it together.”

We ventured up and down each aisle discussing seemingly random topics yet all of them intertwined with food and life. We returned home with our finds and he excitedly unpacked them while discussing the plans to use them. Half of the produce selected by him would most likely not be eaten by him but I bought anything he chose to increase the chances of him doing so.

Later that evening as I served up dinner he came into the kitchen and stated more than questioned, “Grandma is still dead, right?”

I tried not to show my surprise but couldn’t bear to look up from what I had been doing.

“Yes,” I bit my lip and took a breath before looking at him, “Yeah, bud, she’s gone.”

He nodded and responded, “I thought so,” he giggled uneasily and sighed, “Yeah…my car stopped running the other day.” He sagely nodded his head as if this wisdom made sense and turned on his heel only to pop right back in to ask, “Can I watch “Bewitched”?”

I chuckled to myself and went about my tasks thinking about how other parents might react to this situation and thought back to one of my mother’s favorite stories. It was the one about her own mother passing away.

She had been at the funeral, eight months pregnant, in the heat, and was expected to stand about and then help with the reception afterward. With swollen ankles, broken back, and grief-stricken she finally was sitting down at home when my eldest brother, about five at the time, snuggled up to her. She was thankful for his comfort and looked down at him as he leaned against her and asked, “Do you think grandma is a skeleton yet?”

He had recently been fascinated with dinosaurs and the idea of fossils. He apparently didn’t understand how long it took for animals to become fossilized or that asking someone about their dead mother becoming one herself on the day of her funeral might be inappropriate. My mother reacted exactly as I would expect, she cried with laughter and hugged him.

The neurodivergence of our household feels natural and familiar to me because it’s what I grew up with as well. The unexpected observations, the misreading or obliviousness to social cues, a lack of adherence to social graces, and the candid humor of raw honesty. As painful as things can be, there is always humor to be found and my mother was a master of seeing that. I can almost hear her laughter at times and look for her throughout my days.

As I near the second anniversary of my mother’s passing, I’m reminded of how I never got to know my own maternal grandmother and how my kids will miss out on being with theirs yet how proud she was of them and still would be. How these seemingly awkward moments with my own children are a reminder of her and a way to honor her. I miss you, mom.