My mother is me

It turns out that my mother... is a fantasy.
This makes sense because my mother died, in late August, of 1977.
People die.
She is one of them.
She actually died.
She has not existed since that day, so she can't possibly be anything other than a fantasy.

Still, she has existed in my head, ever since.
I thought that existence was real.
I think I knew that the mother that I imagined as a six year old, the one in heaven, the one who hung out with the Easter Bunny and God, was made up. I think I figured that out the same way you figure out Santa Claus and all those other kid things. But figuring that out didn't stop me from thinking she existed. I'm not quite sure where I thought she was, but I know I thought she still existed.

So when this other one showed up, the mother I've been connecting with over the past three years, I really thought that she was real. I thought I was connecting with her. I thought I was actually feeling her. I thought I was finally getting to know her as an adult, as my mother, as someone like me.

But I was not.
How could I have?
She's dead.
It's all in my head.
It was all in my head.

About three weeks ago I got that she was dead. It wasn't a big 'aha' moment, not some earth shattering epiphany, more of a statement: she's dead. It was brief, I think it happened as I passed the photograph of her on my mantel but it felt like what it was: a fact. This is a wood floor. That person is dead.

I'm assuming that this acknowledgement on my part is what brought me to the conclusion I made this week: everything I experience with my mother has to be a fantasy. It can't be anything else except things in my head. She's dead. We can't actually interact, haven't been able to interact, meet, talk, touch, feel... for 37 years. We will never be able to do that, any of that. Everything with her is a fantasy.

All of this was fantasy.

And I am sad.

It was all in my head.

And I am alone.

I am a grown woman. I am experiencing this alone. There isn't anything else to do about it but be alone in it. I'm the only one who can be this: alive and without her. Grown up, older than her, continuing to live, without any shadow or trace or feeling or connection. She's gone, has been physically gone, since that day in my house when she said goodbye. I have not seen her since and will never see her again.

I'm sure I will continue to feel her- that part about no trace, no feeling, no connection- that's not true. It's just that all of those feelings, those connections, they really are fantasy. They may be here and they may be now, but they are not her- they are me.

She is not here. She is not now. She is gone, has been gone, this whole time.