Summary

Author Richard Russo remembers a dream he had regularly up until the night before he and his family scattered his mother’s ashes at Menemsha Pond on Martha’s Vineyard. He wondered if he was having the dream because he was neglecting her. Although she had died in July, the family had not been able to schedule the scattering until December. He felt as if he had a long list of obligations to his mother he had failed to fulfill during his life. In the dream he and his mother were walking to an unknown destination. His mother was weak and tired, and finally Russo had to carry her. The dream went on that way until he woke. The dream recurred from after his mother’s death until she was laid to rest.

Russo looks back in time to the point he was a...