The all-consuming nature of grief is beginning to fade, and with it, instead, comes some guilt, some anxiety, and a lot of sadness. Sadness, I think, is different than grief, but despite my love of words, words, words, I don’t know how to explain what I see as the difference. Grief, I think, is singular. It is… not selfish, not exactly, but individual. Sadness is what you feel for persons other than yourself. Sadness, I think, is the emotion you feel knowing that the world has been deprived of an individual.
I dreamt of mom last night. In my dream, she came back to life, as if she had never been gone. But she had been gone, because I asked her, “What do you remember from your time away?” And she, with a coy smile, said, “Nothing,” which of course, meant “everything.” Dad and I were just happy to have her home–and we were home, sitting on their bed in their bedroom, Mom at the pillows, and Dad and I at the foot of the bed.
I do believe in the symbolic nature of dreams, of course, but I also know the reality of dreams, of your unconscious spitting out wants and wishes in spurts that you later put into a narrative when you wake. If you remember them. I often remember my dreams. They are very vivid.
They are, now, often about Mom.
The Postmodern Bluestocking 
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