Last night was the first time I had a dream about my mom since she died. In my dream, we were both inside of a house, except it was falling out of the sky like Dorothy’s in the Wizard of Oz. My Mom and I were staring out the window of the plummeting house but we were… content. We weren’t scared. We weren’t crying. We knew we were about to die but we were fine with that. This was the exact opposite of how my mother had handled her actual death 2 weeks ago.

My mother believed she had done something specific that gave her cancer. She believed she had made poor choices in her life that lead to her diagnosis and subsequent death. That is why she was so complacent with dying in my dream – this was a freak accident, she didn’t make the house fall – she wasn’t responsible. At first this dream felt like a second chance at my mother’s death, a do-over for the guilt-ridden person I’d seen in the hospital. But then I realized this wasn’t a do-over, but a sign. She was letting me know, “I’m okay. I’m not upset.” She was content.

As we were hurtling towards the Earth, prepared to be completely obliterated, we just… didn’t. Our house fell and we walked outside to find we’d landed next to my old middle school. All of my friends and classmates were there and they were all 12 years old again. My mother looked like she had looked pre-cancer: her brown hair was back, her skin looked healthy and full again. Even though waking up from the first dream of my Mom felt like losing her all over again, seeing her healthy made it all worth it.

After that, my Mom and I walked the halls of my old school, peering into classrooms. Though my Mom looked healthy again, she continued speaking of her cancer as if it were still around. “I was up to speaking 55 words per day, you know. Last week it was only 15,” she told me. Even 15 words was a staggering amount compared to the 2 or 3 my Mom managed in the last days of her life. For the rest of my dream we just walked the halls, holding hands. I don’t entirely know what this all means and maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all, but I’d like to think it was my Mom telling me to be grateful for the 22 years I had with her instead of bitter that there weren’t more.

I often find myself angry that my Mom was taken so soon. She was only 58, I was supposed to get more time with her. I think she was letting me know, by jumping back to my early teenage years in my dream, that I was unbelievably lucky to have had her for as long as I did. While the pain and sadness I feel now is insurmountable, I cannot imagine how it would’ve felt if I were 10 years younger. So there’s my Mom again, still teaching me lessons in any way she knows how.