"In the next room"

She just went upstairs.  Or in the next room.
But there's still a feeling of loss when I return to conscious daily life.

Before I woke this morning I dreamed I was having coffee with my own mother, who's been gone about 20 years.  We chatted as if we were really sitting at a table, no drama, no messages from on high. I asked how Dad was doing, what was he up to these days. "Oh, he's puttering around in his workshop."  We talked about things like I do with my friends, what books have you read? We had always avoided the subject of any medical things since she was a Christian Scientist.  But there were pets, TV shows, and plants...and the grandchildren.  Then she was gone.  And I woke up and thought, she'd just gone back in the next room.

This dream was 2 years ago, and I still have those feelings about my parents.

There was such comfort knowing she was there, loving me still in her own way, which was pretty difficult between us often.  I look in the mirror at this old woman and wonder that my own mother  recognized me the last time I visited her, years before she died.  My own old woman face looks to see if there's any of my sister in there too. Perhaps.

I have spent many hours working on ancestry stories here at the computer.  Honoring those who's DNA flows through me, and now another person who shares it has gone into that other room. 

We love those we share blood and bones with.  We try to understand them. 

My mother who worked an 8 hour job, then came home and fixed dinner and did our laundry and the house cleaning until we were teenagers, and did all the shopping. My father worked the same hours and came home and read the newspaper, and sometimes fixed cars, or mowed grass, or did carpentry...men's work around a home.

Mataley before she married my father.