This morning I dropped Kris off at the airport and started the drive back into the city. Traffic was light and my mind started to wander towards making a list of the things I need to do once I get settled behind my desk. San Diego stuff, comic strip stuff, household errands, the normal things.
And then out of nowhere popped in “Don’t forget to tell Levin that Mom really liked the new business cards.”
Let me clarify really quick. Levin is a friend who’s recently helped me design some new PvP business cards. I just got them delivered yesterday and we were admiring the way they turned out. And now for some reason, on this drive into work, came a feeling that I had shown my mother these cards, and that she really liked them, and that I should remember to share this news with Levin.
Of course this is impossible because my mother has been dead since 1996. Now this wasn’t just a mental slip where I meant “Angela” but instead thought Mom. And yes, I get that it’s very Freudian to mistake your wife for your mother, but excuse me if I don’t bother to beat myself up for being one of 1 billion men on the planet for whom this applies. It’s happened, and that’s not what this was.
I was recalling a memory of an event that never occurred in which I showed my mother these business cards, she had liked them, and that had pleased me. It felt real and fleeting. Once the surprise of the feeling snapped me into self examination I lost hold of it.
Something really funny happens when a person dies. You lose the immediacy of the details that make up the way it feels to be around them. Maybe that’s just my lazy brain or maybe nobody retains these details. Why would you need to when they’re present all the time? Regardless these details about my mother have been lost to my conscious mind and reside only in my subconscious now. And there are only rare occasions where something forces a detail to surface and usually that happens when I see similar details in others. Sometimes in strangers from across a room.
Anyway, the whole point of telling you about this is the following: It’s very easy for me to dismiss why this happened. And I think it would be very easy for me to say “Well, wow. Mom was talking to me from Heaven.” I think a lot of people do this and my first inclination is not to be one of those people. Not because I don’t want or need to believe in such things, but I want and need to believe in bigger things. I don’t like the idea of my mother’s soul being consigned to an eternity of watching me live out my life from a cloud. Who would embrace the idea of their loved one being imprisoned in an existence of observing a life they can no longer participate in? I prefer the idea of her merging with eternity, losing her limitation of experiencing time linearly and exploring new frontiers.
But this morning, I have to tell you. My rationality, my natural skepticism was severely trumped by how good it felt to hear from my mother again, even if it was only imaginary or a result of a stray synapse. Is it really so dangerous to embrace that my mother wanted me to feel her presence and dropped a loving note in my head? Is it such a slippery slope to allow myself that indulgence?
Levin, my mother called. She really likes the business cards.
