(Male, 40’s) I woke with oily puddles of half evaporated tears in my eyes this morning. Horrible dreams about my mother, where she was still alive, where people were having a barbecue on her back lawn, neighbors encroaching on her space like she wasn’t even there. They were using her grill and had pulled another one in as well. Hundreds of invaders. I went over to speak to them. The chief instigator looked like that actor, that guy who played a thug in Dazed and Confused. He offered me a joint. I tried to look cool, to be cool. He assured me he’d got an OK from “the old lady.”
I retreated still agitated. Mom in the dream had a dog, a small shaggy poodle. Wherever it went, the carpet changed from blue to brown, like it was changing the territory to places that belonged to Mom. It strayed into my house — in the dream, I lived next door to my mom. My carpet turned brown, square by square. I went over to talk with Mom. She started complaining about how I hadn’t put a proper tombstone on her grave. I didn’t know what she was talking about for the longest time. I hugged her hard, wrapping my arms around her like I didn’t do enough of in life. She was small and frail. She wore a faded pink housecoat. I told her I was sorry. She didn’t seem to hug me back, she seemed pre-occupied as if I’d caught her in the midst of doing something else. Eventually, I realized what she was talking about with the tombstone and I started weeping. I was still crying when I woke up this morning, early, long before sunrise.