Collapsing of Past/Present(ation)

I've had an academic interest in temporality since I took Emily Apter's class on periodization during my master's at NYU. Now, the personal side is coming in: my mother's death is sparking an examination of my childhood and my family history. That history is also intertwining with my theoretical interests in developing ways (more later on this).

Personal history comes up in my dreams a lot. My mother is usually there, sometimes sick, sometimes healthy, always recognizable. (This isn't surprising, according to grief literature. She was there a lot before she died, too, but now it's almost constant.) When I am stressed, I tend to dream that she is angry with me. more often, though, she's part of the fabric of my unconscious. Last night i dreamed that she was retrofitting a van to give herself a place to get ready for work. Two night ago, there was a grandma in my dreams: she looked like mine, but was mean instead of adorable. (When I dream that my mom is mad at me, its much the same feeling of displacement - not that I didn't ever misbehave and make her angry, because Idid, but because for much of my life, i have been my own worst critic and she has been my defender.) I realized today, with a bit of a jolt, that I want to talk to my dead-for-ten-years grandmother about the loss of my mom. I want to know how she handled her own mother's loss. 

I'm wondering if part of this is a trace of my extreme unease and anger that my mother wasn't given to chance to see me achieve more of the things I planned on. (She knew me as a master's student, but not as a PhD student, for one.) Both she and my mother had careers and children (and in my grandma's case, grandchildren) when their parents died. 

Even sharing this information in a relatively public forum is a decision I didn't expect. When my mother got sick, I decided, somewhat consciously, to post a lot of information about my feelings and the trajectory of her illness on Facebook. This was in part so I didn't have to explicitly tell people things and also, I think, because I wanted to vent and let off steam. (My mom often read and commented on those posts, including on some about my fears of her death. It was heartening and painful all at the same time, but I wasn't going to keep it from her.) Now that I'm working on my book and writing so personally in a wider online forum (for the four of you who read this and for the countless millions who could), I'm struck both by how reticent I am to air my grievances and what I consider defects, and by how necessary it is. I think my academic work and writing will always carry the stamp of who I am, and I think that's the way I want it.