My Forever Family

One of the main reasons my family decided to join our church twenty years (and a few weeks) ago was the idea that families can be together forever.  There are songs about this theme sung by the littlest children in Sunday school to the oldest adults in worldwide telecast events.  Whether or not you believe in the tenants of the faith that go along with such a notion, I think we can all agree that the idea of a forever family is hard to get upset about.

I've imagined heaven in all sorts of ways growing up.  Family has always been involved but angels, clouds, flight and so on have shifted in the images.  At some point I realized that beyond the core beliefs I have, the rest is really a crap shoot and the imagery unimportant.  That is, until I got pregnant.

Sometime after I found out there was a little one growing right in my own body, I started having vivid dreams. Apparently this is a normal pregnancy occurrence.  Some are silly, like last night's where I was trapped in the parking garage at my doctor's office and couldn't find a spot.  Some are terrifying.  Some make me smile.  All of them feel as real as day.  My favorites, though, are the ones with my grandmother and aunt.

Both of these ladies passed away during the two years I was teaching in New York.  As I mentioned, my grandmother and I had a moment of closure right as I was falling in love with my J-Man.  They never met, yet I can't help but imagine she'd give her full blessing.  My aunt passed the next year, too young of course, after much pain that thankfully her mother didn't have to watch her endure.

In my dreams, the three of us will all be together, in the slanted closets of my grandmother's house, trying on dresses.  Or we'll sit around her kitchen table, drinking from an Uh-Huh Pepsi glass while someone reheats spoonbread in the skinny oven.  We're always laughing and I'm always safe.  When I wake, I close my eyes tight to see if I can visit them for just a few minutes longer.

I'm not loony, so I understand that the logical explanation is that in my subconscious, when I think of motherhood I think of my own mother and her family, I think of the losses my aunt experienced with two stillborns, I think of myself as a child.  The loving experiences I recall are the kinds of moments that my own mother, sister and I will create for PDG one day.  I get it.  Logic and science and all.

But I prefer this other 2% of my brain that imagines why else I dream of them so often.  I like imagining my aunt, in a beautifully perfect heaven, raising her two children as she never could on earth.  I like the image of my grandmother making rolls that the rest of her spirit world can enjoy (if you can taste things in heaven, which I hope you can, because food is truly heavenly).  I visualize the two of them keeping an eye on PDG, while he waits for his grand entrance.  That maybe for the past three years they've all been together.  Perhaps laughing at my impatience to have him come join me here in a world where we hurt and fight and leave too soon.

Who knows, right?  Maybe this is all silliness and the truth is that things end when they end and we are all just results of reproductive cells that found each other and started multiplying until one day they stop.

I prefer the places I've created in my mind.  I like thinking that the same people who loved me as a child are loving my child right now.  I cherish my dreams that make mortal people temporarily immortal.  Who am I hurting, after all?