‘The world’s just not the same when your mother is gone’

My mother has been visiting me lately. In my dreams.

She’s been gone 19 years, so it got me thinking that she must want something.

Maybe I’m not wiping down the walls after I shower. Or maybe I didn’t stop by the cemetery often enough to say hello. I admit I didn’t bring the Easter palm cross until May, but I was sick. And I confess I haven’t spent enough time with my younger sisters.

(If you’re a psychiatrist, please don’t email me. My wife is already doing amateur dream interpretations.)

My first thought was “Uh oh, she’s coming for me.” We’ve all heard those stories, which can be a bit creepy. Then, it occurred to me they might just be friendly “I better check up on my son” visits.

Very often, she comes in disguise:

Me: “Mom, is that you? Why are you dressed like a state trooper? I swear I wasn’t speeding. Mom, please put down the gun.”

Mom: “You fool, this is my spatula. Speeding? You’re driving 45 on the Merritt. Even I drove faster than that … You know, I never forgave you for taking away my driver’s license.”

Me: “You should have gotten over that by now. Besides, you don’t need a license where you are. Where are you anyway?”

The truth is she doesn’t talk much in these dreams; she just makes cameo appearances, like Stan Lee, who kept popping up in those Marvel superhero movies even after he died.

I’ve been dreaming a lot. I shouldn’t say this publicly, but sometimes there’s a ravishing woman in my dreams, and while I’m trying to chat her up, my mother’s standing in the background wagging her finger at me. Bummer.

“Mom, I’m just making small talk with my anima, for crying out loud. Didn’t you ever hear of Jung and the anima? Why are you eavesdropping on my dream anyway?”

Did I forget to lock the car? Did I forget to lower the thermostat? (That would have been my father. My mother was always creeping out of bed at night to raise the heat.) Maybe I didn’t wash behind my ears. She had this thing about washing your ears. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’ll think she’s washing my ears, until I wake up and realize the dog’s licking them. I guess the dog has a thing about clean ears, too.

These dreams might have something to do with Mother’s Day. Every year when I was a kid, I went to the Pine Rock Park spring fair at the old firehouse, and my father would give me a couple of bucks to get a Mother’s Day gift, and every year I bought her some petunias, which she planted over the septic tank, and by the time she died, they had spread throughout the yard, with hundreds of pink and purple and white variegated flowers.

Last night, I told her what’s been on my mind: “Mom, life ain’t easy down here. We got a lot going on — sickness, divorce, addictions, kid problems, arguments, grudges. You used to hold it together, but now it’s like we’re in free fall. We need help. We need prayers. I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but this is no time to be loafing. Get to work.”

She just smiled. My mother wasn’t perfect. She could never say, “I love you,” probably because no one ever told her “I love you” when she was growing up. If we said, “I love you,” she would only mutter, “Me too.”

Like all of us, she had flaws, and I’d gladly tell you about them, but then for sure she’ll be in my dreams, wagging her finger again.

Let me just say this. She was a giver in a world of takers. She even gave when she didn’t have anything to give, to family members and strangers. And despite years of living with cancer, she never complained, even though the rest of us would get hysterical over a paper cut or a bloody nose.

On Sundays and holidays, she spent the day cooking and serving, while everyone else was enjoying themselves, eating, drinking and laughing. When they all left the dinner table to watch the games on TV, she cleaned up.

My mother would drop everything to help a person. I still remember when my cousin with mental health issues needed someone to care for her, but by then my mother was gone. All my cousin could say was “I wish Auntie Dolly was still here.”

The world is an entirely different place when you don’t have a mother to run to with every problem that life throws at you. A mother who tells you everything’s going to be all right. Let’s face it, we need someone to tell us it’s going to be all right, even if we don’t believe it.

The world’s just not the same when your mother is gone.

Anyway, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you … Don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything.