It's My Party, I'll Cry If I Want To

Today, April 21st, is my mother's birthday. Well, I don't know exactly what the correct phrasing is when the person is deceased; is it "is her birthday", "was her birthday", or "woulda been her birthday"? I'm going with "is" because she was born on this day, regardless of if she's still around or not. So there. My dead mom, I'll phrase it how I want.

It's wearing on me harder than normal. Maybe it's because it's the first time my grandmother hasn't been around. I would usually have to keep upbeat for her sake, get her through the day, but now since she's not around anymore either I'm free to wallow if I so desire and I don't have to keep anybody's chin up for 'em.

There was a really random dream in the wee hours of the morn, you know that time of day/night when you dream that is so close to waking time that you recall every detail and even the emotion in the dream? Do you dream like that, or is it just me? Regardless, I have explicit dream recall abilities. I can experience the exact emotions from my dreams, which can be bad if they're emotional dreams as the feelings will stick around with me throughout the day. I was actually in a great mood today despite 1/ my mom being dead, 2/ my grandmother being dead and 3/having a too-real dream that hung around like a thick-pea fog.

So my dream. I dreamed that my mom was still around, but she was sick, with some sort of stomach ailments which were so painful she couldn't stand up. She could only lay around and moan because of the pain. Now, all of this is the fabrication of the dream, it has nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding her actual untimely demise. I'm just setting the table for you, so to speak.

In dream version, I was standing over her telling her that if she loved me enough she would hang around despite the pain, and I was crying for her to stay with me because if she left, "Who will I ever have to talk to???!!!" I was devastated to be losing my mother and my best friend. That's not only a dream feeling, but a real-life feeling as well. And she said, "I do love you enough, but I can't stay, it just hurts too much."

Then she died in my arms (that mirrors the real-life experience) and I woke up and carried that feeling and image around with me all day, and despite that - or possibly because of that - I enjoyed my friends and laughed out loud and went out for an hour and a half Mexican lunch and made plans for my vacations and drank wine in the evening and made some new acquaintances and ate a gyro and had sex with my boyfriend and reminded him I love him. I would say that I fit in a well-lived day in between all the work and obligations. Thanks, Mom. And Happy Birthday.