Telephone Dream
4 Comments | by Lucy Wightman You called on the telephone in my dreaming about a dream. Your voice was so thrilling, even under two dream layers. It sounded only like you sound. It could be no one else. You told me you had a cold and felt “pukey,” and I listened like your Mom, telling you to come home, that you could stay home today. We would watch movies together.
The spell broke. “But you died,” I sputtered out, choking on something vile in the sharpness of the words deep in the back of my throat.
“I what?”
“Bean, you died.”
I then went about moving a futon around in a giant, unfamiliar room, although not altogether uncomfortable. I sensed you would be there, that you would arrive so I consulted my compass for exact north.
In my feeling about my dream about my dream there was comfort. It was far away as I slept, farther away this morning when I awakened. It is the closest I have been to you since you hopped out my door in May, a twenty-dollar bill in hand, and the novel Middlesex hitched under your lanky arm.
I thought, walking down the stairs this morning, how nasty an affliction agreeing can be. Inside myself I violently buck against all the padding.
“Because there is no other choice but to go on,” “She would want you to be happy,” “Make her proud,” “Honor her life,” “But people care about you,” “You have so much left to live and to give,” and my least favorite, “She is with you all the time.”
No, no and no again. I believe she is at peace because everything ceased. But there is no more “she,” only in a dream about dreaming and that is not enough for me.
Reader Comments (4)
it is never enough, sometimes, even in what we know as reality.
i know the longing; endless and stabby.
holding you in the peace.
~m
I have a rather large family & family friends. My closest brother (15 months senior) had lived with me as an adult until he was back on his feet. He then went away relatively early in life. One of my favorite nephews had left soon before he turned 23. MY father lived a reasonable life to his 70s, then asked to live with me, which of course that then happened. He then went away a few months later (we had finally opened up with eachother more than ever, ( I had given him my bedroom) where I found him fully dressed as he was getting ready to go to a doctor appointment after I awakened that morning. I still live in the house (3rd I have owned).
As much of my own pain as I hear in your words (and pleasure to hear what I do not have the talent/learning to express), and have a right to understand to some levels... there is something discomforting to me about your choice of a the downbeat as the final note "AND THAT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR ME". Please if you would let me know, could you further expound upon it only if that is okay with you? ... now you know writing is not my forte.
Enormous reasons to view this article absoulutly great...
http://howtodealwithdepression.org