Just as I thought this blog would be morphing into a diary, this happened.

I was working at my desk this morning when around 7:30 a.m. my mother appeared at my door. She seemed uncertain at first and then relieved when she saw me. She had had a dream, perhaps a nightmare. More and more lately these nocturnal events seem to becoming a part of her reality. Some are pleasant dreams about her family, but some are not.

This one was one of the latter. She was clearly shaken. We sat down together and she told me what had happened, in her dream. She received a phone call to meet a man in a bar located in an unsavoury part of town. She knew the man, and although she did not like him, she felt compelled to go. No physical violence occurred, but the threat was there. She finally left and made her way home. She clearly remembers coming up the stairs of our condo, stepping inside, and going to bed, which was when she woke up, surrounded by a dream that seemed so real to her, as dreams often do. Which was when she got up and found me, much relieved that she was here and not there.

The dreams worry her because, I think, they remind her of the time she went wandering in real life not so long ago. She asks me to assure her she cannot get out, that the measures we have implemented, if they do not work on their own, will surely wake me up, so I can find her at the door before she walks out in what I can only think of as a dream state.

And who was the man who told her to come down to the bar? I mentioned in an earlier post that during the years after my dad died and before she met my stepfather, there was a third man. Not a husband, but someone, a significant figure, for good or bad, she could not say. I could, and did, but she said no, he was not the one. I think, however, that he was the one haunting her in last night’s dream. I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever felt real hate for, except this man. He lived with us on and off (off when he took jobs out of town), but mostly on. They argued well on into the night on too many occasions, drinking and smoking cigarettes. He was a crude man, probably psychotic, and when my mother thought she had had enough of him, when arguments threatened violence, she broke off with him, only to let him back into our lives again. The nights I could not stand it any more, the nights I called the police, the night he ripped the phone out of the wall.

I believe he died in a plane crash while on his way up north for a job, an explanation for his lasting absence that finally came to light. My mother did not weep for him, nor did I.

This may seem harsh, but it’s the truth. And now my mother may be coming to terms with it in her dreams.