I saw my mom in heaven
“What are you doing here?” she asked, toying with me.
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost
I had a dream last night about Louise, my mom, sitting on a couch in heaven. Her legs curled off to her right, tucked just so under her right hand. She called out to me. Not like one of the girls, sweetly in two syllables—”Moll-y,” or “Lin-dy,” or “Li-sa,” or “Laur-ie”—but boyish and sharp—”Mike” or “Jim”—her pink lips mouthing directions at her sons. “John,” she said to me, matter-of-fact, dewy eyes and coffee breath, a smile that meant she was drinking me in.
Image by Steve Buissinne
Her calling my name brought me back to our house, somewhere in Idaho, me bouncing into one of the many kitchens where she ruled from some barefoot adventure. “Lucky,” she’d say, that I was hers.
“That’s my boy,” but talking through me to someone I couldn’t see. Then she’d focus on me, correcting what she said. “No, no, not luck at all, son—blessed.”
I watched my mother, enthralled that she appeared to me. A silhouette, lounging in heaven. I didn’t feel asleep, but what other thing triggered this?
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost
“What are you doing here?” she asked, toying with me. Like I’d come into the kitchen scrounging for chocolate chips or some sugary thing that pretended to be necessary for cooking. I explained to her I needed them for a school project. But she knew what I was up to, by that smirk, though willing to allow my concocted tale to flow freely—all this remembering in an instant.
I snapped awake, but just from one dream to another, intruding into my mother’s space again.
“I think you called me,” I said to her. She wore draped slacks, a knitted blouse, I think. The same woman I always recall—relaxed like she deserved it, enjoying every quiet minute. I was not a child but a grown man. Done growing, actually. I have been traipsing downhill for years, almost the same age as Louise the year she died.
I had her full attention. She held that smile still, clicking her tongue on her teeth like she was drawing breath on a Chesterfield. But she wasn’t smoking, was she? Not up here in heaven, for God’s sake.
She tilted her head, saying nothing, and I asked, “Is dad here?” A long pause. I looked at the small table next to her. Is that a glass of wine? “Not yet,” she said smoothly, answering about dad, not the wine. She didn’t acknowledge the wine, even here. A Katherine Hepburn rocking head motion, Jackie Kennedy smile, but all Louise. All her.
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost
What? “He’s not here?” I said. Shocked, curious, confused. “Where’s Jack?” I was calling my mother Louise, and now my dad, Jack. It was uncomfortable, inappropriate, adult, and new.
“He’s wrestling with Jesus,” she said, waving her hand beyond me. My face showed the pondering of such a thing, the visage of my dad in wrestling garb?
“Metaphorical wrestling?” I calculated, unable to grasp dad grappling shoulders and locking legs with Jesus.
“Sure,” mom said, uninterested in speculation. Still. No sense explaining what was obvious, beyond me, and too difficult to explain.
Then, there he was. He had a towel around his neck. He looked great!
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost
My dad nodded hello to me. “Good to see you, son,” he said.
“What’s he doing here, Louise,” he said to mom. He was skinny, taller than I remember. Dark hair, and lots of it. Those bony shoulders, somehow making his howdy-doody ears handsome. Was he wearing glasses up here?
“You look better when I see you with both eyes,” he said, winking with what used to be that glass eye. I melted in front of him.
“Wrestling?” I asked. “With Jesus?”
“Well . . .” he said. “When in Rome.”
“Huh?”
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost
“You shouldn’t be here yet,” he said, turning, and bending into where mom was. He sat next to her and the other half of the couch melted into a chair that somehow folded out into a Lazy-Boy, magically creaking as he cranked a handle to his left, and it popped into a laid-back position. His feet lifted with the rising bottom of the chair.
“Louise, I don’t think he’s supposed to be here yet.” I thought I saw a cigar, a pipe, and an olive on a little plastic skewer. He slid the olive off the stick and chewed it, his eyes half closed. “Ambrosia,” he moaned. I shook my head slowly.
Reaching one arm across to Louise, she patted his hand lightly. “Hi, Jack,” she said, and they looked into each other like I’d never witnessed before.
In an instant, I woke up.
I sat up in the chair where I’d fallen asleep. I smelled my dad’s sweat and my mom’s breath and realized it was just me.
A little bit of each of them.
So many things forgotten, but no good ones will be lost