MUM STORIES: Why do I keep dreaming that my mother is dying?

If someone wants to adopt a child already living with them, do they have to get legal consent from the biological parents? PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • If heavy suppers are what cause such bad dreams, then this worry should be banished forever.
  • Someone confirm that. Say it is because of over-indulging during supper. Endorse that notion and I will go to the rooftop of the tallest building in Nairobi and shout the loudest “hurray” ever.
  • Because my mother should never die.

I keep having the same dream: that my mother is dying. Where are the dream interpreters to tell me what my dream means?

The dream came thrice in March. The circumstances surrounding it were different but my sweet mother always wound up dead. Scary! It was a continuation of the many dreams (or should I call them nightmares?) I have had about her dying from a long time ago. I think I was in Standard five when the first such dream came, and they have been irregularly recurring since. Different settings, same dreary ending.

I NEVER TELL HER ABOUT SUCH DREAMS

And whenever such dreams come, I never tell her. I don’t know what our Kisii culture says about opening up to people whose death you have dreamt of, but I know it is pretty gross to start telling anyone such things. I’ve also dreamt of the death of a couple of close people. But in the case of my mother, I know I can’t speak of that to her. No way. I’ll burst into tears before the first word comes out.

After the third dream in March, I had to tell someone. I blame it on my introverted nature that I don’t have many confidantes but I chose one who is rather close.

“You ate so much that you started dreaming about people dying?” That is the verbatim WhatsApp message I received back. I had no comeback so the discussion ended there.

Among the Abagusii, the belief is that you only dream of someone dying after you eat a lot. Okay, I eat well. With me having office nicknames like “Ka-rhino” and “Baby Hippo”, you can guess the copious amounts of food I consume.

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and supper like a pauper,” they say. For me, I break my fast like a pauper then do the reverse of that hackneyed nutrition advice.

MY MOTHER SHOULD NEVER DIE

If heavy suppers are what cause such bad dreams, then this worry should be banished forever. Someone confirm that. Say it is because of over-indulging during supper. Endorse that notion and I will go to the rooftop of the tallest building in Nairobi and shout the loudest “hurray” ever. Because my mother should never die.

I read some psychology book in the library of my alma mater Moi University, which said dreams reflect our inherent fears; that if you have some strong fear of losing something, you are likely to dream that you have lost it. Could it be that our brains like playing ‘Naswa’ on us? I don’t know. Maybe that is why I once dreamt that I had missed a KCSE paper. Because I always lived with the spine-curling fear that one day I may oversleep or just forget to look at the timetable and an exam would go on without me. And, oh yes, I once dreamt about breaking up with some girl when we were still an item. When we were still an item.

HAD ME FREAKING OUT

Away from déjà vu dreams, columnist Jackson Biko wrote something in 2012 after his mother died. It has had me freaking out ever since.

“There is that knee-wobbling phone call that a man receives: the news of his mother’s death. Unfortunately, it’s a call you have to take because the other option would be to have your mother receive the news that she has lost a child, and no mother should be put through that,” he stated in an emotional tribute about the loss of his mother to coronary tuberculosis.

Is it true no mother should be put through that? Sometimes I think not. I want my mother around “till infinity” to quote that washy line by Teknomiles.

Because one day,I want her to explain to me why she cried that day she saw a fraught boy walking towards the parents’ waiting bay when she came to visit a sick me in high school.  Malaria had got the better of me and it was the week before KCSE. Mum just shed tears as she saw me limp from the dorm. I don’t think we spoke much that day

I want her around till infinity because one day I want her to explain to me where she always gets the motivation to pack me the farm-fresh produce whenever I’m leaving home for the city. Some maize, some bananas, some sugarcane. Always packed with finesse last seen on the day Queen Elizabeth rode in the Lunatic Express to Kisumu. And even when she is sick, she still musters the energy to carry them for me from our rural home to the bus stop. I’m a big boy now, ’ma. Why are you still so concerned about my wellbeing?

STORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD

My lovely mother should be here till thy kingdom come because one day I will want the full narration of how I was a “troublesome” kid like she and dad always tell me; that among the five sons they have, me being the second born, I cried the most, suckled the most, “harassed” mum the most. That I could hardly let mum work as I was always unleashing terror whenever she carried me on her back as she worked. I would want her to narrate that to me like she would a two-year-old. Maybe those were the roots of me being a mama’s boy?

Mum should be around forever and always because, heck, who else should I be calling at the end of the week when the pressure from typing words as I think has burnt the inside of my cranium, leaving something that feels like soot in my skull? All I need is a call to her and all the soot or smoke will be cleared, because she has a way of getting all my jokes and joking back in return.

Mum should live forever because one day I want to sing to her a rendition of Lucas Graham’s Seven Years, then I will let the world know what she told me when I was seven years old.

And this bad dream ought to be banished forever too. Or should I start doing my suppers like Bartimaeus the son of Timaeus? 

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