I awoke and looked at the bedside clock which, as I recall, showed a time around 3:10 am. The house was silent and no lights were on, although our bedroom door was open as we had two young children sleeping in other rooms and I liked to keep an ear out for them if they were disturbed in the night.
Almost without realizing it, I found myself sitting with my legs over the side of the bed, facing the bedroom wall directly beside the open door. At this point, I noticed a light coming from the landing but didn’t seem to register it as strange (no lights were on when we went to bed). Then I became aware of the light becoming brighter and appearing before me (about 5 – 6 feet away from where I sat) by the bedroom wall I saw a vision of my mother in the clothes she was buried in.
We had a very difficult relationship when I was growing up; she often told me I should have been drowned at birth or that I was going to be put in a home and nobody loved or wanted me (my father was unaware of this abuse as she was always careful to say these things when nobody else was around). This, obviously, colored the way in which I responded to her throughout my younger years. She never hugged me or told me she loved me or kissed me … ever. As a child I was frightened of her (she would also beat me with a bamboo cane at the slightest provocation) but thought this was how all children grew up. So you can imagine that when she died suddenly, I felt a sense of relief (although we did have a slightly better relationship once I had married and had children of my own) – I even inspected the embalming incisions on her body when she was at the funeral parlor to make sure she was actually dead and couldn’t come back to hurt me any more.
I don’t know how long this ‘vision’ lasted but neither of us moved, yet I felt a pair of arms wrap themselves around me and hug me so tenderly. I have no real recollection of returning to sleep but when I woke the next morning, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It took me years before I told anyone about it as I had convinced myself that it was little more than a dream, but even now 22 years after the event, I can recall it as clearly as if it happened last night … something I can never do with dreams.
I am now of the opinion that my Mum came back to me to apologize for all the pain she had caused me in my early years. I would love the have the chance to see her once more to tell her ace to face that I have now forgiven her (although I am still dealing with the psychological fallout of my upbringing).