I had a bad dream. I had returned home for the winter holidays, as I will two weeks from now, and only my father, my sister, and I were in our parental home to celebrate. We weren’t sure what kind of decoration to install; usually we have a very festive and beautiful winter home full of folk-y paraphernalia collected by my mother over her lifetime. But this is the first Christmas since losing her, so to string the house with objects she loved would only serve to remind us constantly of that loss (again, this is both real and applies to the dream). So instead, my sister decided to purchase what in the dream amounted to an avant-garde christmas tree: a small upright log standing on end in a flower pot, from the tip of the log sprouted 6 large green leaves in a perfect ring. Orange fruits dangled from the stem of each leaf. Christmas came and passed and it wasn’t until is was finished that I expressed my deeply-felt disappointment in the avant-garde tree. I was so mad that no one asked me what kind of Christmas I would want (in the dream, and in reality, I want a proper tree, not too big), hurt that they made decisions without me, and truly disappointed in the sad log that served as our holiday centerpiece.
I woke up suddenly, and immediately settled into deep sadness. I’ve been struggling with unshakable melancholy for a week (since Thanksgiving) and now I can really recognize why: a time of year that I usually find warmth and comfort and womb-like happiness is missing its locus. What was a grandiose 16ft. tree with an abundance of light and ornament is now sad, avant-garde log with droopy fruit.
With my mother gone, many of my holiday traditions are null: shopping with my mom, shopping with my dad for my mom, making cookies with my mom, making pierogi with my mom, opening pajamas on Christmas Eve that my mom has chosen for us, Christmas stockings with tchotchki chosen by my mom — she was the heart, the identity of my family and now, when it comes to things like Christmas, I have no idea what to do or what to expect.
The first holidays after a tragic familial loss - particularly, I think, losing a mother who orchestrates the entire holiday season - are uncharted territory. And it is terrifying to face this change. Such a sorrowful change. It feels as if there’s no home to go home to anymore. And while I was caring for my mother, I was home - home was my identity and my mother was home so therefore self and mother were conflated . . . now home/mother/self doesn’t exist anymore and I’m lost.
So this morning, after the dream, I forgave myself for my melancholy (I’m often frustrated with myself for being sad) and realized that, shit, I have a right to be f–ng sad. And I also have a right to be confused - i’m reconstructing a self that was half-lost when my mother died. I feel that, at 27, I should know who I am, I should be more comfortable with myself, more certain of my purpose. But my mother largely gave me my purpose, both in the sense that I had purpose in caring for her my entire adult life (for the past 8 years) and this caring imbued my life with its meaning and its necessity and also in the sense that in talking with her, by receiving guidance from her, I was directed, soothed, assured of my value. All that is no more. I feel more naked and more vulnerable than when I was shipped off to college when I was 18. At least then I felt that a whole world of possibility awaited me. Now I know that life’s only constant is the promise of loss, the threat of our very human-ness.
I was aware of mortality and life’s brevity at an early age, particularly as my mother was in and out of the hospital since I was a baby. But as a younger person, this just planted in me the idea that one needed to live as much life as they could, to experience as much as they could, as quickly as they could. So, I was a reckless and adventurous child and teenager - but all this experimentation was allowed by the fact that I had a warm home waiting for me with its beautiful glowing-hearth-open-arms. It was my net under the tightrope. The building that is “home” still exists, but its heart is gone. And my heart is broken. And my dreams (I have lots of dreams since my mom died) distill what are normally rather nebulous floods of emotion into visual symbols and metaphorical scenarios. Dreams, I’ve decided, have for me become an essential element in mourning and recovery.