night terror

Sometimes it takes you by surprise.

You've tidied up the mess, smoothed down the edges of your life, and you expect an untroubled sleep.

But then you wake up in the middle of the night in vertiginous wordless despair as, in your dream, your mind has intuitively grasped, for a second, the total horror of your Mother's situation: the appalling plummet from the full person she was to that unbelievably insulting parody sitting in the Care Home, spooling a few silly phrases endlessly on a loop, like someone's answer-machine that you ring long after they died, just to hear their voice.

And then comes the aftershock.

The thought that occasionally she might have a similar insight.