i'll see you in my dreams

"I never knew grief felt so much like fear."
--C.S. Lewis

Lewis was right on target: grief does feel like fear. The same breathless, sickening sensation of a sharp kick smack in the middle of the gut; the trembly, disoriented, foggy feeling in the brain; the same clenching, harsh pain around the heart.

All summer--strangely, ever since my headaches started easing up--I've been dreaming about my parents, especially my mom. The dreams always follow the same pattern. I'm reunited with either or both of my folks, only to have them die right in front of me. Almost every morning I wake up, crying, to face another day of fresh, raw grief, as though they died only yesterday. It's as though I'm haunted. It's made me depressed and weepy as of late; I'm extra sensitive, so every perceived slight hurts all the more, and my self-esteem is swimming around in the depths of the toilet.

Obviously, I haven't processed my mom's death. As I look back over the past year, I realize I've dealt with my grief, in many instances, by not dealing with it. By focusing on having a baby, partly to fill the void left by her absence. (Yeah, my head knows that won't work, but I suspect my gut feels differently. I should point out that I've desperately wanted a baby for a long time; it's just that losing my mom makes my grief over not conceiving even more intense.) By distracting myself with the TV and books. By telling myself that hey, I'm forty years old now, it's time to grow up and stop yearning for my mommy. The constant migraines, I now think, were in part, my grief coming out sideways.

Oscar Romero once said, "As a Christian, I do not believe in death without Resurrection." And I do, it's the hope I cling to. But I can't bear the thought that I will never again in this life feel my mom's arms around me, or be able to rest my head on her shoulder. That she's not there to soothe my hurt feelings when I feel rejected or like a failure at something. That there's no one left to reminisce with about the things the three of us did as a family together. I want to get past the grief, to get on with my life, to focus on enjoying my wonderful memories of my mom and dad; I just don't know how to, I guess.