Thomas Wictor

Today I hung out with several of my mother’s friends from the Historical Society. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since Mom died. I have mixed feelings, since only one of them visited Mom in the hospital. A person who isn’t my favorite anyway decided to try and pick a fight with me about my father’s death, taking issue with the way I expressed how I experienced it. This didn’t bother me as much as it might’ve, because I’ve learned that people get hostile when you talk about things that scare them. I’ve decided to present a reincarnated post because the topic of conversation kept coming back to reincarnation.

They all ridiculed the idea. I’m a firm believer in reincarnation, because—to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—”Anyone with even the slightest intelligence can come to no other conclusion.”

How’s that for belligerence? I guess I’m still angry at these people for not having the guts to visit my dying mother. They’re all going to die anyway! Staying away from Mom didn’t make them immortal. Just to twist the knife a little, I told them that when I had to go to the hospital in December, I had Tim take my picture so that I’d have a memento of what I look like dead.

As I’d hoped, my comment unsettled them. They should see this photo.

You have to admit it: I’m going to make a heck of a corpse, assuming that my face isn’t blown off by a jihadist or an octogenarian Nazi.

I didn’t let any of Mom’s friends know that I believe in reincarnation. But just to further freak them out, I told them about the dream I had four nights after Mom died.

She and I were on a tour bus trip. She was only about twenty-five. That’s her in the middle.

We sat side by side, not speaking. It was late afternoon, the light golden. I was my present age. The bus was quiet and had a very smooth ride. Everything was perfect.

When we stopped to eat at a restaurant, Mom said she had to wash her hands. There was a huge Catholic holy water font right inside the front door; it was made of red granite and had a white-tiled interior.

Mom climbed in and submerged herself up to her neck, vigorously rubbing her hands together. There was algae at the bottom of the font, beautiful bright green tendrils swaying gently as though in a cold mountain stream.

When Mom was five, her parents sent her to a Catholic boarding school after a newborn sister died, and my maternal grandmother went into severe postpartum depression. Nobody told my mother what was happening. She was simply sent away. Her letters to her grandfather are heartbreaking. She asks him to please not forget her.

At the Catholic boarding school, the nuns forced Mom to sit at the table alone for hours, not allowing her to leave until she’d eaten her mackerel. Mom hated mackerel. It was oily and fishy. She also hated being told what to do. Eighty years later, Mom made herself anorexic and died. Without knowing it, she was furious at her parents and at the way the nuns treated her, so she wouldn’t cooperate with us. She killed herself to avenge the child she once was.

We could never speak about her deep anger. She couldn’t admit to it, because that would’ve been criticizing her parents, which she was unable to do. Her entire adult life consisted of rebelling against them, though she couldn’t admit that either.