Just the other night I had one of my delightful dreams about Mom. And, as always, a few minutes in it occurs to me that she’s dead.
“Wait. Mom, didn’t you die five years ago. Remember? The hospital and the hospice, and the mortuary wheeling you out the front door?”
“Oh, you crazy kid. You must have misunderstood.”
Every single time. Always this silly death thing, just a misunderstanding, what are you talking about “dead,” who’s dead, you crazy kid.
So, essentially, Mom is somewhat immortal. I keep conversing with her in my head. I know that’s what the people with the babies sometimes say: they want some part of them to live on after they die. But that only lasts a generation or two, unless people have the babies to continue their DNA, as a little personal eugenics experiment.
Of course I can’t deny there’s a chance for immortality in the afterlife, seeing that Mom conversed with her baby brother, sister, and mother waiting for her. Neither dead father, it is to be noted. And technically not her sister, who was off praying for her. It seems odd that in the afterlife you still have to go someplace special to pray.
Of course, I’m busy paring down all my religious beliefs. Back to reading the Gnostic gospels and the Nag Hammadi texts. In the past I’ve been able to maintain my belief in God because of the sense I had at the church of an external force speaking to me. I was thinking about that and remembered that I interpret my depression the same way, a “voice” outside of me. So if I’m making parallels, either the church voice is God and the depression voice is Satan, or both are evidence of mental illness.
Then again, if the church voice was mental illness, it certainly was brief. I know there’s a type of epilepsy that triggers the hippocampus and people experience religious visions in lieu of seizures.
I don’t know. Hey, can you tell I’ve weaned myself off my medicine?
5 responses to “Immortality”
Back on the meds, girlie. I love that, “you crazy kid.” And has it really been five years?
Yes, your mom is immortal and deserves to be.
I am not mentally ill, though. Those voices make a lot of sense to me.
Seriously, as they say, I can’t hear my mother’s voice any more.
Becs – I suppose she will die when I die. I suppose I could have a baby and name her Margaret. Whoops, no I couldn’t.
Hattie – I can’t hear it in her actual voice but I certainly know what she’d say on all topics.
Last Monday was my mother’s birthday. I didn’t think to mention it to anyone on the actual day, and that’s been bugging me for a week. No dreams about it, though.
Tami – my brother Nd I always call each other on Mom’s birthday. I forgot it this last year.