I have been on a bad run of nightmares lately. Tonight was just a continuation of the same. I woke up crying. Not a little, but a lot. My eyelashes saturated in sadness. I used the palms of my hands to angrily do-away with the evidence of what had transpired, and sat up in bed. I saw her again tonight. I saw her with remarkable detail. It was just me, and her. Somewhere within the deep recesses of my mind, I knew it was a dream. But I did not try to wake up. I allowed for whatever the dream may hold, to present itself. And what unravelled, was a most sorrow filled confabulation between two people. So much so, that my tears followed me back from the land of make believe.
In the dream, I was in a room. This room was void of any real detail. It was just a room, two chairs, myself, and her. We sat across from one another. Close enough to speak quietly and comfortably. Although, comfortable is a descriptor best left out of this fable of the broken mind.
I can’t recall the entirety of our interaction, but I know that it was anything but jovial. Each spoken word was weighted by grief. Though I cannot remember all of the details, I know just how it started… I looked right at her and said, “Hey Mum…”.
“Hey Matt”. My ears rang with her familiar tone and accented twang. I recall her smiling in the dream. As if to try and comfort me. It didn’t work. Instead, it just felt like a slice from a knife. Cutting deeper.
“Why Mum? Why’d you do it?”
“Oh, Matt… I’m sorry… I am”
There was a pause, and this is when the tears came. One by one they flooded my eyes. She never reached out to touch me. She just sat there. Waiting. Since this was all in my mind, I guess I was the one controlling that. Eventually, I looked up from the floor, and through a stained-glass gloss of tears, I looked at her. All of her features are just how I remembered them. They were not at all how she really looked towards the end. They were how I wanted to see her. She even had a God-damn cigarette in her hand…
I continued to ask why? Why she had done what she had done. Why she chose to leave this world the way she did. All I was met with, was apologies. Her soprano voice, and British accent continued to atone for what I was feeling. For what I feel.
As the dream progressed, so did the conversation. I asked her what I was supposed to do now? How was I supposed to live the rest of my life, free of pain knowing that she is gone? She did not answer. Again, I suppose because this was all in my mind, there was no way she could. Because it would mean I have the answers, and I don’t…
As I felt my breath getting shorter and more panicked, I stopped asking questions and with mantra-like repetition, I recited over and over, “Mum, I miss you. I really miss you.”
“I miss you too boy-o. I do.”
In hearing the words “Boy-o”, a favorite expression of my mum’s, my ears snapped back like that of a dog’s acute reaction to sound, and I reached to hug her. When I couldn’t reach, I ran. I ran, and I ran but she just kept getting further and further away. Always appearing just out of reach.
Remember when I said at the start that I was not in much of a hurry to wake up? Well, that all changed. Now, a voice within my head kept chanting, get up, get up, get-up! My lungs filled with air in preparation to yell. I slowed to a jog and vociferously lamented the words “MUM! WHY? … why? … why?” There was no answer… Almost an absence of anything. It was as I began to fall to my knees that I woke up. Woke up crying.
Upon waking up and wiping away the freshly fallen tears, I looked towards my wrist to see what time it was. I assumed it had to be late as I must have been dreaming for a while – it turned out that I had managed an astounding one-hour-and-twenty-five-minutes of sleep. Jesus-fucking-Christ…
And now here I am, after dragging my fatigued and aching body from my sheets, sitting here, writing this. A virtual memoire of the restless.
I suppose I need to concede to the fact that there are just some answers that I will never get. That’s just part of life. And in this case specifically, death as well…
Today is therapy day. A day I usually dub, “nap day”. Therapy days can leave you feeling completely drained and exhausted. So, although I am not a working man, I feel I can say with absolute justification: fucking Monday…
Cheers folks. Hang in there.
(Here is a song that speaks to me today)
A Medic's Mind 
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