I had a recurring dream the last two years which now is much less confusing than it once was.
I’m walking through a dry rolling pasture with my mother. It reminds me of my great-aunts farm in western PA, rolling tumbling hills edged with high pine forests, buffering the sharp edges of the surrounding mountains. I’m walking my mother back to her car, which is parked at the bottom of the hill. We’re taking the trail through the field, under the tall pines, and down the steep hill.
I’ve always known the woman walking with me was my mother, but as we get farther into the woods, she begins to change and becomes much more frail and weak and small, and can’t make it down on her own. Having this dream again recently I know it’s still my mother I’m walking with.
As she starts slipping, I pick her up. I turn and begin the climb back up to the house, but she insists, we must go down, through the darkness, to the ferns at the bottom.
I start crying. I can’t let her go. And I usually wake up at this point.
