My mom's birthday is Dec. 10 (yesterday, relative to the timestamp of this entry), and I intended to call her to wish her happy birthday. I live in the Central time zone, and she lives in the Hawai`i time zone, which means the earliest I can call without waking anyone up is around noon. But she beat me to the punch and called me up at work.
I thought that was odd. She's not the type to ring someone up and ask them why they forgot her birthday. In fact, when I greeted her happy birthday, she had forgotten. She cares for my dad day-in and day-out, and it would be an understatement to say he's not in great health. That she would forget her own birthday didn't really surprise me.
But the purpose of her call was even weirder — she wanted to know how I was doing. I had talked to her over the weekend, so I immediately suspected she must have had a dream alarming enough to spur her to call. Sure enough, that was the reason. She dreamed I had gone out somewhere, and when I didn't come back after a long while, she went looking for me. My grandmother, who died in 1992, went with her.
I'm not sure what she found more disturbing — the fact I went missing, or that my grandmother was in her dream. So I stated the obvious.
"Well, the anniversary was this past Sunday," I said, referring to the day she died. Dec. 7 was the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It's also the day the New York Philharmonic first debuted. And it was the day my grandmother died.
"Oh," my mom replied, realizing she had forgotten that date as well.
It seems nobody in the family remembered. Or if they did, they forgot to call my mom up. Usually, she and my uncles and aunts would get together for a vigil on the anniversary, and they would call each other up to make sure it happens.
It didn't this year.
Perhaps everyone is so busy that the day slipped them by? Or maybe 16 years is just enough time to make that date seem distant? Or perhaps my dad takes far too much of my mom's time and energy?
Maybe it's all of that.
I'm just kind of surprised by how the subconscious works. My mom has a dream about me, but it's ultimately a dream about my grandmother. Actually, I think there's a deeper analysis there, but I'm not a psychologist, not even on TV. So I'll save my head shrinking the next time I talk to her.
I just dig the fact I was able to make the connection her subconscious was trying to point out — to some degree.