“…I thought she was just an apparition, an illusion…”
(Male) I can’t believe I’m telling you this and if you don’t think it’s a nightmare that’s fine but it was about the house where I grew up. I haven’t even seen that house in probably ten years but it’s where I spent my entire childhood. It was getting dark and I was working outside doing something that was a mixture of yardwork and cleaning out the stuff that was in Mom’s basement. For instance there was a dumpster full of papers but I was gathering them up with a leaf rake. Weird, right? I had just put a load of papers in the dumpster when I turned around and I looked into the front windows of the house. They are a long picture window almost as wide as the whole house. It was dark as I expected…
… Except I could make out clear as day that my mother was sitting in a chair. It was like she was sitting directly under a spotlight because she was so brightly illuminated. The colors of her clothing were so vivid. She was wearing a blue crushed velvet pant suit. Her hair was still a vivid red, not the gray it had turned after chemo. She had her legs crosses at the knee and she was drinking a cup of tea. She was smiling and so very happy looking.
I was struck in my tracks because of course, she’s dead. And it had been so very long since I’d seen her so healthy, so happy. I wanted to just stand there looking at her because I thought she was just an apparition, an illusion… maybe just a happy memory and it’s been so hard to come up with many of those happy memories. But she was there. She was right there and I would have been a fool to keep standing in the front yard with her sitting there.
So I ran in through the front door. And I found the room completely dark and empty except for the gray light of twilight spilling in the windows. I was for some reason afraid for my mother’s safety, that now she was dead, somehow she was in more danger than when she was alive. The house felt a strange combination of being haunted and at the same time, very, very empty. I woke up crying.