It was the dream again- the one that stalked my sleep relentlessly. Cory, her shoulders shaking with the weight of her distress, would run to fill the doorway of whatever room I happened to be in. She would call to me, crying out for my attention, my help, my comfort. I would turn to her, horrified to see her remaining teeth covered in blood, some broken, some gone. "It hurt, Mom, it hurt a lot!"
At this tearful cry for help, I would awaken, unable to do anything to comfort her...the final indignity to a mother. I had been robbed of my ability to do the thing I did best in the world. How often had she said she didn't know what she'd do without me?
As I slowly placed items, textures, colors in my room, I also placed the certainty that it had been a bad dream. Cory was not here, she was not bleeding, she was not crying. She did not want me.
But had she?
These were undoubtedly the unanswered questions that fueled this seldom changed nightmare. My brain was obviously not going to give up the quest for these answers. As I thought to myself, I'd give anything not to dream that again, I gave myself an idea.
I didn't know if my idea was healthy or unhealthy. What I did know was myself, and that my subconcious's nagging urges to have these questions answered was not going to give up until it was satisfied. My subconscious can be a pain in the butt that way.
As I considered going to someone to get these answered, I felt slightly empowered. Healthy or unhealthy, at least I would be taking action. And as gruesome as it seemed, I did want the answers to my questions.
This idea simmered in my mind throughout the day, until I had a chance to run it by my friend. She had taught me from the very beginning, to ask her for exactly what I needed, without shame. After all, this grief wasn't coy; why should I be?
So I pitched the idea to her: would she be willing to call the funeral director who had prepared my daughter and ask him some specific questions in an effort to bring my mind some peace?
She didn't even bother to ask why I didn't make the call myself. She already knew my reasoning. Yes, I wanted the answers, but I needed the filter of Angie's thoughtful word choices and soothing tone of voice to hear them in the least harmful way.
That is how my friend, Angie, came to call the funeral home, reintroduce herself to the kind and compassionate funeral director, explain my sleep disturbances and flashbacks, and ask for some answers to my disturbing questions.
They were as follows:
- Were Cory's teeth broken in the accident?
- Was Cory delivered naked to the funeral home?
- Was Cory's spinal cord broken in the accident, making it likely that she did not have conscious thought or suffering?
- Was there a great deal of blood?
Moments later, Angie hung up the phone, and turned to me calmly. "Okay, are you ready?"
I was. Angie explained gently that Cory's teeth were all intact. Cory had not been delivered naked to the funeral home, but in the clothes she had been wearing on the scene. The funeral director was absolutely positive due to the nature of Cory's injuries that she had died upon impact. Yes, there had indeed been a great deal of blood.
I covered my face with my hands, and bawled without shame. My emotions were an exhausting stew: relief that her teeth were not broken, relief she had been clothed, horror that she had been hit hard enough to have gone on impact, gratefulness that she did not suffer, confirmation that I was not crazy because certain details from the scene stuck in my mind like a burr, while others were simply a mystery...and overriding it all- simple heartbreak, sweeping over me in a fresh wave as concrete answers to questions no parent should ever have to ask made her death all the more real to me, and impossible to deny.
Healthy or unhealthy, it had been done. Now my brain knew all it seemed to seek when I was sleeping and defenseless. Perhaps, at the very least, the nightmare about Cory's teeth would slowly stop happening.
Time would tell.
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