So, here it is: another online therapy session on my blog. Apparently I need to do this. Where with my father I have grieved more privately, apparently with my mother passing I need to share more or else I feel like I’ll explode. Feel free to skip if this downer of a post is not for you.
We had a very nice Christmas. Went to friends for dinner on Christmas Eve and then I met up with my younger brother to go to midnight mass in an Anglican-Episcopalean church in Rotterdam. It was a tribute to my mother who loved church services with English Christmas carols.
On Christmas Day Mr E made us a nice breakfast and late afternoon we went to my in-laws for dinner. On Second Christmas Day we went to my older brother J’s house, almost all siblings were there, we cooked together, my aunt took over the bible reading my mother always used to do and we had a very nice time together with merriment and laughs, just like my mother would have loved. Especially everyone breaking out in singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” at random times would have really made her laugh. However, hanging over it all, like a dark cloud, was how much we all missed not having mama there. Christmas was something we all very much associated with her, it was a feast she always loved making special.
I also had an extra someone to miss so very much: this is the first Christmas that Junior wasn’t home with us. He is in Lisbon and had to work over the holidays. He was especially missed at our festive Christmas breakfast table, where there were only 3 plates instead of 4.
Luckily video calling exists and we were able to talk to him several times and he did the rounds with the families on the phone.
Now it’s back to ‘normal’ life, things are starting to settle a bit after the rollercoaster month we had. Mr E and I decided to go pick out a floor for our new house, which we did yesterday. After that I went to my mother’s apartment to babysit her old cat Mieuw. My younger brother J is taking her with him to Germany after the holidays but for now she needed someone to be with her, so I stayed with her overnight…
Mieuw is used to having my mother around all the time and she really seems to miss her. Anyone who sits in my mother’s armchair will at some point have Mieuw to come and join them. The first few days she’d go to my mother’s bedroom and meow, I once even saw her meow at the chair. My brother used to live with my mother for a while so he and Mieuw know each other best and I am happy he is taking her with him. He returns here this evening and after New Year’s will take her with him to Germany.
Being at my mother’s house all alone for the night has also prompted me to dream very vividly again and again I feel the need to record these dreams. Not only about my mother but also about the family. So, here goes:
Dream 1
I’m on a train with family, my niece N is sitting opposite me with her boyfriend (which is weird because she is gay and doesn’t have a boyfriend or even a partner at this time). He then gets up and after a while walks by again, now dressed in a ceremonial military uniform with a marching band behind him, all to everyone’s delight. Somehow he is then marching with band outside and my older brother J follows in a car and my younger brother J follows along with another car pulling a caravan. I am sort of floating beside them, observing it all. Then I ask younger J, “Do you think he’s going to propose?” Older J says, “Maybe!” We ask the boyfriend, he had no such idea at first but says maybe in the future and does show us some fancy ring. We’re then back on the train again, including marching band and it’s all one big party.
Somehow the whole family goes back to some big hotel where we’re apparently all staying at. We all go to our rooms but I seem to have forgotten something and so go out again. I then need to rush back to the hotel, so I run to the hotel behind my younger brother J, who is apparently with me. He’s faster than me, I can’t catch up. He takes the wide stairs and runs up them, just as I enter the lobby. I see the elevator arrive, so jump in there, thinking I can beat him to our floor. I push 3 then think, no, I have to go to 2, so I push that. As I get to 3 first, the elevator doors open and at the end of the hall I see my dad sitting at a table close to the rabbi who led our mother’s funeral service. They have their heads together, looking over some papers. I go up to them and they welcome me. They then stand up and walk and the rabbi is looking at my dad very intently. “Are you sure?” he asks, tears in his eyes. My dad says, “Or course, that’s what friends are for.” My dad then walks to me, takes me aside and says to me, “The rabbi’s hotel is in trouble and I’m going to bail him out.” He seems to be looking to me for approval, tears filling his eyes. “You are such a generous person and good friend,” I say and tears start streaming down his face as he pulls me into a close embrace. This is remarkable to me, because I have never seen my dad cry this much.
Somehow I am outside again, in the hotel garden. My mother is sitting on a bench, my sisters and my sister’s partner M and I are standing around her. M has some sort of little speech about how extraordinary our family is and how extraordinary mama is to have achieved that and then she returns my mother’s wedding rings to her: my dad’s ring and her own, two rings together that she had been wearing around her finger ever since my dad passed away. The rings were taken off in hospital and we are now returning them to her. She is very moved as she puts both rings back on her finger and we are all very moved with her.
Dream 2
Mr E, younger J, older sister R and I are in Germany going into a church we all seem familiar with. There is some sort of market going on inside there. Outside in the distance we hear marching music. “Who actually likes to listen to marching music?” R asks. I reply, “It’s the way everyone likes to enter a church” and I start marching and swinging my arms as I enter the church. In a reflection behind me I see the others do the same and we are all in fits of giggles.
Somehow J is now sitting behind a reception desk inside the church, telling us where the good bits of the market are and where we can get coffee and cake. I hand him a €25 voucher for the coffee and tea and have a flashback to him giving me that voucher and me telling him he didn’t have to do that.
Dream 3
I come into this shop, a bakery maybe, that I seem to know well and also seems to be a daycare. They are under staffed and I jump in to help. It’s chaotic with children and selling goods and I work together with a nun, who I seem to be friends with. Is this possibly at a convent? I know I need to leave on time because I am meeting 3 ex colleagues for lunch at 12.30 pm. I somehow make it out of the bakery/daycare and run home to get changed but realize I’m never going to make it on time to Rotterdam because I need to still change clothes and pick up the car. I text them that I’ll be late, that I’ll get there at 1 pm. For some reason I need to return to the bakery/daycare and things seem to have gone haywire in my absence. So, I jump in again to help out, completely engrossed but feeling guilty because I don’t even have time to text my friends to tell them that I’ll be even later. At the end of the day I finally leave and run towards home again, passing through this picturesque convent garden. Another ex-colleague (but not one of the three I was going to meet) sees me running by and exclaims bitingly, “Way to go, standing up your friends like that!” As I run by I defensively say, “Don’t judge me! What do you know? My mother just died and I just had to help out with the chaos!”
It’s been a month and a day since mama was admitted to hospital and tomorrow will mark 3 weeks since her passing. It is still raw and I feel very much like this statue with a gaping hole in the middle.
The Book of Esther 