The Ghost Lady in My Dreams

She’s neither ethereal nor ghost-like when she appears in my dreams.

In my dreams she’s very real. So real, in fact, that most times I don’t even realize she shouldn’t be there until I’m on the edge of consciousness. I often wake like Ebenezer Scrooge, wondering if what I’ve experienced was a dream or reality, but I am nonetheless changed.

The lady in my dreams sometimes admonishes me and sometimes showers me in love. Sometimes she’s the main character and sometimes she’s a piece of the backdrop. Sometimes she talks with me and other times she talks to others around me about me. In some dreams, I am her little child again and she teaches me how to get along with my sister. Other times she is sitting in her blue recliner in the living room, watching TV late into the night until my father gets home, constantly trying to fend off sleep until he does. I can smell her perfume,  see the lines on her face, hear her laugh.

I am not haunted by her but yet…

This woman who comes to me in my dreams is not even a vision. She is just her. She functions as though this were real life and everything was as it used to be– for better and for worse. Time stops when she appears in my dreams. Though some of my dreams stretch a period of days or weeks, those moments are even more fleeting than in real life and I’m always left longing more. More time. More space. More relationship. More her.

The lady who comes to me in my dreams is my mother. 

She has been gone for so many years. Each dream is both an extra bit of this earthly life with her and, at the same time, a taste of eternal life with her. It is with her as Paul McCartney wrote of his deceased mother: “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother [Jeanne] comes to me.” Yes, my soul is still troubled by her passing. Now she is my bridge over troubled water. She walks me through the difficulties of this life to the One Who will wipe every tear from my eyes.

Every time I see her in my dreams, I know it is a mercy.

She is still with me, walking beside me, loving me. She is still doing her motherly duty of bringing me to the feet of Jesus, making sure I make it to eternal life with Him, with her. The most powerful prayer is that of a mother and now she prays perfectly.

When I wake from dreams of her, I am left with so much longing. How to describe how much I miss her and long for her…it is like an endless pool of cerulean water sucking me in. But this longing also catapults me. Because she is now with God (whether Purgatory or Heaven itself) I now want to be with God even more. My love is not perfect but I want it to be.

“Theresa, do you love me?” the Lord asks me. “You know everything, Lord, you know that I love you,” I reply. “I do believe! Help my unbelief!” That is why my mother comes to me in my dreams. “Help her unbelief,” my mother begs of the Lord for me.

When I wake from my dreams of her, I am flooded with grace and peace. Someday I will be with her again.

Image courtesy of https://picryl.com/media/mother-and-child-sunlight