Original Post Date: 14 Jun 05 Tuesday
Original Post Title: Dream #5
I slept over my friend Joe's house. I guess in my sleep I was sobbing, and he came over and hugged me and stroked my head. I didn't wake from this dream until later. I was at my grandmother's house. A house I haven't been to in almost 12 years. It was during the time she died. Somewhere in between the wake and the funeral. Or after it. Or before it. I don't know. I just know that she was dead, and newly dead at that. She wasn't actually in the dream. It was her absence that I was acutely aware of. I was looking through some clothes, in the tiny room at the top of the stairs, my uncle Pat's old room. I found something pretty and lacy, and old fashioned. A nightdress I think. I wanted to try it on. I slipped it over my head and went across the hall to gaze at myself in my grandmother's clothes using the big mirror that attached to her long. low bureau (which is now my long low bureau with the big mirror). The room was dim, and I fumbled for a light switch. There was a switch on the inside of the door, and the outside of the door. No matter what combination of switches on and off, I couldn't get the lights to stay on. Almost as if there were something in there I wasn't allowed to see. Or wasn't allowing myself to see. I finally just went in and tried to use the little light that came in from around the curtained window to peer at my foggy reflection. I turned around, and in my grandmother's room, her large four poster bed, which for those few years was our fourposter bed because I slept in her bed with her when she was so sick (She died of cancer) was dismantled and leaning against the walls. Taken apart. Because she was no longer there to sleep in it. I stared at those bed pieces, (which are also now my bed, along with the bureau) and slowly realized, she would never sleep there again. She would never lie next to me, muttering Hail Mary's in a soft voice as I fell asleep, never tease me with ice cold toes under the covers, never push play in the little tape recorder by the bed to drift off to whale song or Holy Choirs singing, which she fondly called her "angels singing" tape. Her rosary was gone, her pill box still full of meds never to be swallowed. Her smell was diminishing from the room. Her essence, her energy. She wasn't there. I backed up out of the room, suddenly overcome and terrified by realization. I fell backwards over more things stacked up in the hall way, ready to be thrown away or donated because she no longer needed them. My brother saw me fall and looked at me from the end of the hall, but did nothing. He watched my cry, and I cried so hard. lying on the floor facing her dark empty chasm of a bedroom. My chest was hurting. i was bursting at the seams with grief. It was so difficult to breathe. I felt that my brother couldn't relate. He didn't love her like I did. He didnt know what she meant to me. The only person I trusted. The first person I gave my whole heart to. Gone. Forever. It hurt just as bad upon waking and finding the dream remnant tears in my eyes as it had 12 years ago, the day I called her house and my mother answered her phone. I had tried to call the hospital earlier that day, as I had called every day to tell Gramma I love her, and I'd see her soon. But that day a nurse had answered the phone, and told me to call the front desk. The front desk told me to call the family. I didn't understand what that meant. I called her house, thinking she'd gone home. How right i was. Hi mom. Why are you there? i thought you went shopping? Is Gramma home? where is she? I don;t remember the phone falling out of my hands. I hardly remember my friend Sarah helping my instantly numb body off the floor and to the couch. I had been eating something. Oscar Mayer bologna. it sat on the arm of the couch, cold, limp. somehow emulating me. Someone came to get me. I don't know where Sarah went. The rest feels like I dreampt it. But it was real. I have to keep telling myself that. Part of me still doesn't believe it.
Original Post Title: Dream #5
I slept over my friend Joe's house. I guess in my sleep I was sobbing, and he came over and hugged me and stroked my head. I didn't wake from this dream until later. I was at my grandmother's house. A house I haven't been to in almost 12 years. It was during the time she died. Somewhere in between the wake and the funeral. Or after it. Or before it. I don't know. I just know that she was dead, and newly dead at that. She wasn't actually in the dream. It was her absence that I was acutely aware of. I was looking through some clothes, in the tiny room at the top of the stairs, my uncle Pat's old room. I found something pretty and lacy, and old fashioned. A nightdress I think. I wanted to try it on. I slipped it over my head and went across the hall to gaze at myself in my grandmother's clothes using the big mirror that attached to her long. low bureau (which is now my long low bureau with the big mirror). The room was dim, and I fumbled for a light switch. There was a switch on the inside of the door, and the outside of the door. No matter what combination of switches on and off, I couldn't get the lights to stay on. Almost as if there were something in there I wasn't allowed to see. Or wasn't allowing myself to see. I finally just went in and tried to use the little light that came in from around the curtained window to peer at my foggy reflection. I turned around, and in my grandmother's room, her large four poster bed, which for those few years was our fourposter bed because I slept in her bed with her when she was so sick (She died of cancer) was dismantled and leaning against the walls. Taken apart. Because she was no longer there to sleep in it. I stared at those bed pieces, (which are also now my bed, along with the bureau) and slowly realized, she would never sleep there again. She would never lie next to me, muttering Hail Mary's in a soft voice as I fell asleep, never tease me with ice cold toes under the covers, never push play in the little tape recorder by the bed to drift off to whale song or Holy Choirs singing, which she fondly called her "angels singing" tape. Her rosary was gone, her pill box still full of meds never to be swallowed. Her smell was diminishing from the room. Her essence, her energy. She wasn't there. I backed up out of the room, suddenly overcome and terrified by realization. I fell backwards over more things stacked up in the hall way, ready to be thrown away or donated because she no longer needed them. My brother saw me fall and looked at me from the end of the hall, but did nothing. He watched my cry, and I cried so hard. lying on the floor facing her dark empty chasm of a bedroom. My chest was hurting. i was bursting at the seams with grief. It was so difficult to breathe. I felt that my brother couldn't relate. He didn't love her like I did. He didnt know what she meant to me. The only person I trusted. The first person I gave my whole heart to. Gone. Forever. It hurt just as bad upon waking and finding the dream remnant tears in my eyes as it had 12 years ago, the day I called her house and my mother answered her phone. I had tried to call the hospital earlier that day, as I had called every day to tell Gramma I love her, and I'd see her soon. But that day a nurse had answered the phone, and told me to call the front desk. The front desk told me to call the family. I didn't understand what that meant. I called her house, thinking she'd gone home. How right i was. Hi mom. Why are you there? i thought you went shopping? Is Gramma home? where is she? I don;t remember the phone falling out of my hands. I hardly remember my friend Sarah helping my instantly numb body off the floor and to the couch. I had been eating something. Oscar Mayer bologna. it sat on the arm of the couch, cold, limp. somehow emulating me. Someone came to get me. I don't know where Sarah went. The rest feels like I dreampt it. But it was real. I have to keep telling myself that. Part of me still doesn't believe it.
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