rotten cowboy

Thinking again about the story my mom told me. She was legally dead for almost an hour. (? I don't really remember. I was 9 and it was the worst day of my life.) And she told me, when she "died" she fell into the deepest, most comforting darkness in her life; And then she would wake up in a beautiful, underwater meadow. And she told me she woke in the middle of a "nest"? And she felt a very deep grief, because she was looking for her "son" who was a "fish boy". And no matter what she did, she couldn't find him. And I remember This was a period in my life where dad "abandoned" me (I would not say that, he was taking care of my mom at the hospital, but it is a technicality) & I remember, I would lie alone in my parents room; And in one of those nights where I was alone, I dreamt of my mom, falling down a tall, grassy hill, and me chasing after her. But she fell down the hill, broke her spine, and she looked up at me, and I cried and cried; because in the dream I sort of "knew" she was gonna "die". I started pulling her hair; and then her head came off in my hands, and her "head" was actually a mask. And in place of her human head, she had the head of a fish, and I looked at her and cried and cried and cried, not understanding what she was, but knowing I would still love her even if she was a fish. And then I remember waking up after that, and eventually, getting a call from dad a few days later that mom was awake from her coma, and she would alternate between looking for a "third" daughter, and then a "third" child, who was her eldest son. In the end she would have to grieve a child that never existed, and me and dad had to adjust to a new life of being caretakers.