This dream I had last night about my mom who died recently. It's a pretty startling experience when a parent dies, even though I am well established with my own family now and I live very far from my family of origin. I have tried to learn as much as I can about myself and my relationship with her, which was very codependent when I lived near her, and then rather strained when I moved away. We had very different ways of viewing life and living it.

I dreamed that my mom, stepdad and various family members were getting ready for mom to die. I was there, too. I did not resonate with their ideas and plans so I just wandered around. I walked outside and noticed a big portion of the neighbour's fence had been removed. I had a look and saw it was Steve (my gardener's) yard. [Steve is very ecological and cares passionately about the earth and its well-being]. I like Steve and I brightened up to see him out in his yard building something. It was hard to tell what it was at first so I focused in on it. It was a construction made of huge smooth stones all mortared together with some dark natural mud/clay. I began to see it was a huge platform for a small fountain on top. Once I could �see� it, I was delighted. Steve was standing there so proud of it and fascinated by it. I noticed he was naked, so I did not look too closely, but I felt quite comfortable with him realizing that he was a very free soul and I loved that about him. I told him the fountain was beautiful and I truly wanted to sit and chat with him and enjoy his space. He was eating something. I looked more closely and saw it was a cooked, jacketed potato. He was relishing it as something natural from the earth to eat. I started to ask him if he didn't at least want some butter on it (shivering at the idea of eating a bland potato like that), but I realized he enjoyed the purity of it that it came right from the beloved ground.

Just then my mom walked over. She was rather silent, never saying anything, but I knew what she wanted. I said, �See Steve's fountain, isn't it wonderful?� She nodded, but she wasn't that interested. She was there to get me. I knew she would be dying soon and she wanted to spend time with me. And I agreed. So I said goodbye to Steve, though if not for Mom, I would have stayed. And I gave him a peck on his sweaty cheek and I said with motherly affection, �I really do love you, you know,� and left him to eat his potato and work on his yard.

I followed Mom up the street, but she was walking farther and farther ahead of me. I called out to her, �Don't you want to wait and walk with me!� She shook her head silently, but not unkindly. I thought about how I left the enjoyable scenario with Steve in high hopes of some quality time with Mom, but it didn't seem to be happening. We ended up in an office building with a wall made of windows. Mom went to the windows and began spraying them with cleaner in preparation to wash them. I wondered why she was spending the last of her time alive washing windows! But I knew the answer that she in someway conveyed to me. She kind of knew at some level that it was not the best way to spend her time, but she wasn't interested in fighting her impulse. She was used to cleaning and worrying about the effort she put in and what others thought. She was going to spend her last hours doing what she had always done.

The windows were in an office cubicle area where three women were working. It looked a lot like Mom's various office cubicles over the years. And there was a long rectangular TV that was playing and was built to fit perfectly into a bookshelf so the ladies could watch TV while they worked. I could never fathom how someone could concentrate on work and watch TV, but these women apparently could (as could Mom in real life, and she had a small TV in her cubicle which brought her immense pleasure). As Mom began washing the windows I said that I wanted most to be happy and that I wouldn't have a job unless I really enjoyed it. �Yeah, right,� the women said and rolled their eyes, chuckling knowingly. I felt a stab of self-doubt after feeling so good and sure about my thoughts. The women said something about people needing a career, and I said, �I'm 42 years old and I have worked as an office manager and psychologist, don't you think I've had enough time to figure out what careers are about?� They seemed to acknowledge with a bit of confusion that I wasn't just a young idealistic girl and maybe I was onto something. But they shrugged it off and went back to their routine.

I left the area and found that I was in a huge, high-ceilinged building. When I would look up at the ceiling, I would see flashes of lights that were entities/organisms/orbs moving in and out of view. And a couple of giant black Xs that looked just like chromosomes (it is obvious to me now that I was exploring my inner self in this dream and the chromosomes were an additional cue). I wandered over to a brown-skinned family gathered around a table. We were somehow familiar to each other and I sat down. The mother pointed out a problem with the family where the grandmother of the family would go through phases where she thought she was a young girl and would become competitive with the teenage daughter in the family. I looked over at the grandmother and she gathered her hair into a pigtail and instantly her face transformed into a younger girl. She believed she was young and so she was. �See!� the mother exclaimed, irritated by this action. I held the mother lovingly and firmly by the arms and looked deeply into her eyes and said, �Sometimes people need time to act out their ideas. She may do so for the rest of her lifetime. It is okay.� I felt like I was teacher, talking to her this way, but then a bit of self-doubt crept in and coupled with this mother's lack of understanding, I lost the momentum of my speech. I knew the grandmother wasn't really hurting anyone, and they could just leave her to her lesson of identifying with a much younger role. N*tural consequences would lead her to the eventual understanding she would need in its own sweet time.