A fantastical story which quickly led me to be a little uncomfortable around that ex-wife. Little did I fully understand the bond between a departed Mom and her son back then.
I never did wanna know much about any 'parallel universe'. Always figured that the laws of nature and geometry would protect me from crashing into that barrier. I realize now how easily it can happen. What I'm about to tell you is the sort of story about a Mother-son bond that Rod Serling might have used for his weekly TV show.
I have the pathetic middle aged fat guy malay known as bad snoring or to be medically correct, sleep apnea. It's a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts - hey, it has been known to cause death. Especially if you live alone and don't wake up in time to take that breath. I sleep hard and sometime dream but always forget the dreams the next day. But this one night two weeks ago; I didn't forget.
I'm swimming with my recently deceased 86 year old mother. Mom appears to be swimming ahead of me in the ocean off Santa Monica Beach. Its an over cast day but we're swimming parallel to the beach front together anyway. Mom's ahead of me
in the water doing a side stroke. (Not clear if we were both swimming naked or not; but that seems a minor point in light of what happens next.)
So Mom starts yelling back at me to turn around and go back. I can make out her strong command over the calm ocean. I ignore her (like I always did when she yelled at me for smoking, drinking or womanizing) but then I heard her serious voice and saw she was pointing at me to swim back - no, demanding that I swim back.
She repeatedly said in a very calm voice, "Turn around now Bernie, you need to go back immediately. Do not follow me." I kept thinking how she was nutty as always but after three stiff warnings. I reluctantly obeyed.
As soon as I turned about in the water I immediately awoke from my sleep in a complete terror, unable to breathe. The dream ended, I sprang up on my feet, opened the door to the garden and started to breathe in the night air. It was 4 am and I realized that I might not be breathing if I hadn't turned back.
Now when I related this dream to my older brother, he seemed most weirded out regarding the naked part of the dream - and I will say that necrophilia is perhaps a little more unusual than say, cross-dressing. But, I can certainly let that part go in light of the 'supernatural' side of this whole story. The whole issue of being rescued by your deceased Mother dredges up much larger fears in my mind; like a 'parallel universe' and lots of Twilight Zone music in the background every time I think about it.
So I don't scoff at my ex-wife's story about Jackie Kennedy anymore. I think Moms continue to watch over you one way or the other for a very long time. Someone said that God couldn't be everywhere so he invented Mothers. That feels real true. I'm just grateful that Mom hasn't abandon her post yet.
