I made a wonderful discovery this morning: I still dream of her!
I was beginning to worry; I hadn't seen her in a while - a few months maybe.
For the first two years, I dreamed of her two or three times a week. In the dreams, my depth of understanding varied. Sometimes I had no idea she was dead and acted totally naturally: fighting with her, hating her guts, pitying her, dancing around a thrift store with her and laughing.
Sometimes, I was breathless with fear. "Something bad happened to you," I said in one. But I forgot what, until her boyfriend entered the room.
In others, I was amazed that she was back from the dead - almost as much as I would be in real life. What are you doing here? You're supposed to be dead!
One time I even said, "We have to call the medical community! This is huge!"
Then I recited her Social Security Number when she asked for it, and I knew it in my dream because in real life I'd filled it out again and again and again.
In that same dream, I said I was sorry that death sucked so much; she'd said no one in the afterlife would talk to her. I said I was sorry and then I sobbed into her shoulder, "It's been so hard on me, you have no idea."
I suspect this last part had nothing to do with her death, at all.
This morning, I dreamed I'd had a baby. A boy. And I was welcoming my friends and family to a park to meet him. She arrived, a little rotund and greying, with these outlandish turquoise spectacles and colorful outfit. I called her "Grandma" and hugged her, and noticed that it felt all wrong. Her being dead, for one. But mostly because I never saw this happening - not when she was alive. And it makes me wonder, at what point was it too late? At what point could the course of her life have led her instead to a park to celebrate her first grandchild?
I could spend the day making a list of moments - and those are just the ones I was there for. It's not exactly the If Only I'd... trip. It's more an aching wish to see how all her alternate universes have played out.
My favorite dream - and this was pretty early on - a spider had stolen her simple gold necklace, which she hadn't worn since I was a child, and had spun it into a web high in the rafters of a barn. I said, "I'll get it down for you," but she didn't seem to care either way. And after struggling to get up there and realizing the danger, I decided to just let it be. That it was more beautiful that way.
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I don't dream about my father that died in 2007. I can't recall a single one in the last three years. It's very strange to realize that. I wonder what that's all about. Instead, he only sneaks up on me in seemingly random, sometimes absurd waking momements. I can sit in his desk chair at my mom's house, look over pieces of paper with his handwriting with his old dirty hat that still smells like him nearby and not even have a flutter of emotion. But everytime I pass the crazy mega sportsman's superstore he loved (a place I have never been too and can't relate too in any way) on the Katy Freeway near my sister's house my heart physically aches and I have to fight tears.
ReplyDeleteI know I sound like a broken record, but I can't wait for your book.
You never dreamed of him? Do you remember if you did when he was alive?
ReplyDeleteI hear you about the weird times and places for a flood of Themness (for lack of a better word after midnight, going to bed). For me, it's Fleetwood Mac songs or anything that makes me long to be home in Dana Point, under a palm tree. I feel her like a rush through me, like a memory I'm having in my stomach or my arms instead of my head. Is it like that?
You mean Cabela's? Yeah, that place makes me cry as well, for some reason.
Yes, I did have dreams about him when he was alive and no never since he has died. I hadn't even realized that until reading this. It is true, the physical sensations you mention are what I feel too. Mine are in my chest and stomach. The sportsman's place isn't Cabella's, but a place just like it and yes there are a variety of reason it could make a variety of people want to cry. heh.
ReplyDeleteerin - this made me think of something i wrote about dreaming about my uncle after he died, which i just emailed you.
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