Tears in the Night, My Mother's Cabinet

My mother’s china cabinet is made of a dark wood with glass and wooden filigree.  Inside it she collected Auntie Mama Cookie jars and an odd assortment of old photographs.  It has been in every apartment, every home we ever lived. It is one of the few things of value that our family actually owns.

Last night I dreamed about my mother. She has been dead now for 11 years.  It feels like only yesterday that she died, that I heard my brother’s voice over the phone and that stone fell within my heart.
Tonight I dreamt of my brother’s house where my parents lived with him – where my dad still does.

In the dream I went home to find another woman in the house with my dad.  My mother was in another room broken hearted, on an old mattress – down the dark hallway.  My heart lurched.  How could my dad be doing this? How could my brother allow such a thing? 

“She’s been dead a long time” he says – as if excusing my dad’s adultery. 

“How can she be dead if she’s in that other room crying? I say logically and for a minute - confused.

I yell at my father then, putting my hands over his face as if to strangle him.  I’m screaming at him over and over that he can’t do this to my mother and that I would make him pay for hurting her.  

My brother reaches into her cabinet and brings me a photo of her with him from years ago.  His hair is longer and blonder but he still has that amazing smile and those cornflower blue eyes.   I began to sob. 

And to wake knowing she is dead, with a pillow covered in tears- is more than my heart can bear.

And now I sit, four-something in the morning, still crying over my own certainty that my mother was there with me last night.  I felt her, I saw her – she spoke to me.