Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: dream, grief, letter, motel, polaroid, softtone film
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I dream about you a lot since you’ve been gone. Usually you seem very real, and the things you do in them are things you would have done if you were still alive. Like in one dream, you booked a room at some crappy motel next to a broken-down Ferris wheel, and Kristy, Fred and I had to scramble for money to get us all out of there and home. Or another time, you spent all the vacation money on souvenirs, so we couldn’t enjoy the rest of our trip. Why are you so irresponsible? I said, as if I were talking exasperated to a child. I have to remind myself, even now, that you were a grown woman, my mother.
But last night’s dream was different. I was standing at the top of the stairs of an old house. I heard knocking at the front door and peered down to see a man waiting for me to open it. I couldn’t see his face, but you were standing in the corner looking incredibly sad. Mummy, I said, and I panicked because you were disappearing. That’s not mummy, that’s a man at the door, Kristy said somewhere behind me. I was the only one who knew you were there.
[from A Conversation project]
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This one really resonates primarily because it is an exhortation within a dream and very intimate, bursting with emotion. And the motel snapshot is perfect–god, what a place, even the stain on the sidewalk on the left adds to the glare. Thanks for this. M
Comment by Michael Williamson April 23, 2012 @ 10:09 AMThis was the first ‘letter’ that I wrote for the project, and also the easiest to write. I always ‘write’ letters to my mother in my mind, maybe because she wrote so many when she was younger. Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing your thoughts.
Comment by Lisa April 24, 2012 @ 5:31 PMThe more I think about it, the letters really need to become a book!
Comment by jeff April 22, 2012 @ 10:34 AMthat makes my heart swell with love.
Comment by Lisa April 22, 2012 @ 8:47 PMWow. This took my breath away. I have had conversations like these with mine over and over again. I struggle to hear her voice. See her face. I want to ask her everything and can’t. I need to go for a walk and think more about your entry.
Comment by motherblue212 April 22, 2012 @ 10:06 AMthanks, kimmy. i knew you could relate in some way to the dreams – the loss that one feels when they’ve lost someone close. i felt, too, that this was a turning point in my grief. i don’t know what that is, still trying to figure it out.
Comment by Lisa April 22, 2012 @ 8:48 PM