Dark Visions

I never wanted my mother’s profession, never. What would it be like to relive the last moment’s of a person’s life? I know, for she has told me; recounted moments, hours—of murder, rape, violation, and violence. Poured these channeled memories into my ear like poison into Hamlet’s father until I wanted to wretch and run from the room. Finally, I convinced her not to share her work with me. It took years! Perhaps she was compelled to repeat it as part of a personal exorcism of the day’s experiences. Maybe it was more a mindless, babbling release than true sharing. But I couldn’t get her to restrain herself.

I couldn’t bear to wade through those dark, fetid waters. That she chose to amazes me even now. She prided herself on her clarity, her clinical detachment. She was no empathetic, possessed medium, suffering and screaming as the victim struggled and bled, like some movies portray. She was a hovering presence, a moviegoer, watching, taking notes, gathering both facts and sensory perceptions—but removed. East. Spring. By that tree. Near that cliff. Within the sound of an old waterwheel. The crunch of gravel. The smell of fresh tar. Marks on the neck. The murder weapon.

It took its toll on her. Plunging into those cruel shadows of life and afterlife colored her own existence. She was wary, even blind, to the world’s beauty and kindness. She needed a watch dog. She kept her windows closed. She feared for me, her family, her friends, her cats. She couldn’t believe I slept with my windows cracked in summer. She slept with a gun beneath her pillow and another in her bedside table—a couple, actually, and various sprays. She began to watch the news channels obsessively, almost all day. She also read murder mysteries and watched cop shows—including the animal cops, which were even more distressing to me than the human shows. Always a heavy social drinker, she began routinely numbing her mind with booze and Advil at the end of every day.

It took years for her to see more darkness than light, but it happened. She fell into depression.

I choose not to live there. I prefer optimism and faith in the belief that most people attempt productive, loving lives: raise kids, feed their pets, go to work, garden, watch sunsets. Evil is real and I have personal knowledge of it, with scars to prove it. But I won’t let it color my days, shut my windows, darken the sunlight. I avoid horror and grim violence in movies. I will leave if a film gets too dark and stresses me out. Science fiction or action flicks are a bit more tolerable, because they're fantasy at their core.

My son’s tolerances have changed as well. He says it’s because he’s old enough to know that the world harbors such dark sicknesses for real, and he chooses not to experience it vicariously. There is a certain triumph in enduring horrific movies, I know, and the young—who imagine themselves invulnerable and immortal—can relish that accomplishment, perhaps. But I comprehend my own mortality too well and I don’t care for it.

In that aspect, mother’s more like them than me.

Ironically, for all her paranoia and fear, her sifting of the dark side, she never saw my own personal danger coming—and thus never warned me.