My Ornaments

Last night I dreamt of Mom again. I have had very few dreams of Mom since her passing. In last night's dream, I was sitting next to her just having a friendly visit. This type of dream I have had many times, about loved ones who are gone. In the dream, as soon as I remember that they are dead, they seem to disintegrate before me.

When Brian received the news that he would be losing his job, I had my very first dream of Mom. In that dream, she and I were traveling together. We had stopped at a hotel for the night, and were in our room getting ourselves sorted out before going to sleep. My mother placed on her bed-side table several small items, about the size of a woman's fist. There may have been 8 or 9 of these, each unique, each mysterious, each intricately etched or carved and made of some sort of precious metal or stone, such as jade. She said to me, without words, "These are the things I never go anywhere without."

I woke up from this dream knowing that there was a message there. The first thing that I had to consider is that while in the dream these were physical items, my mother is now in a non-material realm. If she continues to travel with them, they have to be non-material. But what can they possibly be?

I have been pondering this ever since I had the dream and have a couple of theories. One is based on the fact that my mother always spoke of how precious her friends were, that one should make efforts to nurture those friends throughout one's life. I thought, it's easier when you are a person of Mom's generation, living most of her life in one small, rural area. By virtue of that different pace, one can only make so many friends!

My generation is different. This is the disposable age. If our appliance stops working, we throw it away. It's easier to use disposable diapers than to rewash cloth ones. If our marriage grows stale, dispose of our spouse. And if we move away, or our life takes a different turn than our friend's life, dispose of our friend. I can think of at least two instances of friends in my life who stated that they considered friends essentially as ... disposable. They are there for a phase of life, they can be fun to connect with during this time, but when circumstances change, it is time to drop these friends and make new ones that fit into our new circumstances better.

Guess what? Circumstances changed, and I don't see these friends any more. What they do not know, though, is that I have not stopped caring about them and wondering how things are in their lives. If such a friend were to have a change of heart, and a desire to reconnect with me, it would be as if no time had elapsed since she or he had been a regular feature in my life. I care about the people who enter my life. I can't seem to help myself. In this way, I am like my mother. I do believe that one can never dispense with real friends.

It is true that sometimes we can lose touch with our friends, and in this face-paced world of frequent moves and frenetic lives, it happens far too easily. My mother used to ask me about this friend or that friend, and often I would have to say something like, "I don't know... We've lost touch with each other." This horrified her. "You don't lose touch with your friends... You have to work at friendships, and if you are like me, you'll have those friends into your old age." There was a generation gap there that Mom just could not transcend. But maybe, too, in this age of disposability, it's easy to become lax with everything, including what is the most precious to us: the loved ones in our lives.

As a Baha'i, I believe that humanity is growing towards a state of unity, albeit clumsily and often tumultously. Yet when one looks around, it seems like we cannot avoid or deter this fate. All the forces of this age seem to be compelling us to overcome our differences and to learn to appreciate each other. The setting up of separate camps is not serving us well and may very well be destroying us. We don't really have a choice in the matter.

So, it doesn't really surprise me that we are finding ourselves with more and more tools that make connecting and reconnecting easier and easier. It is marvellous to me. Admittedly, I am a Facebook addict, and I make no apologies. Through Facebook, I have reconnected with friends I thought I would never, ever find again. One of these friends prompted me to start this blog. She knows me so well, and we have not seen each other in 18 years. That is friendship.

Another friend found me by a photograph of myself as a toddler with my mother standing in front of the house where I grew up. She had looked for me by my name, and identified me by the house. We were friends as children, and she is one of those friends I never stopped caring about, and wondering about, but we had somehow lost touch. Our reconnection has been a poignant joy for me. Poignant, because she is seriously ill. After all this time, we reconnect, but will she be around for me to actually visit and have a laugh with in years to come?

I suspect the ornaments in my dream about Mom have layers of meaning, and that their representation of the friends in one's life is but one meaning. But when I think of my friends, I have to agree with Mom. I will forever carry them in my heart. I will not go anywhere without them.