Tag: death

An Old Dream

I think of it as the old dream, but I recall it, too, as the star dream and the blue dream. I’ve had it, or some variation, since I was a teenager, at least in my mind. My memories can be faulty, but I seem to remember being in basic training and having this dream, and remembering that I had it when I was in high school, after I moved in with my father. That thought also brings the dream a new label, the transition dream. I seem to dream it when my life is going through a change. I haven’t had it in a long while.

Roughly, because there are slight variations, but this is the dream experienced or remembered last night, I see a ridge of purple-blue bare mountains. A clear sky is shifting from azure to indigo.

At first I see a single, amazingly bold, bright star above the mountains. Then, I’m on a mountain.

I’m looking at my hand. I’ve made a fist around a cold chunk of lapis lazuli. A large piece, although it’s been tumbled and is smooth, one end is rough. I always think, it was tumbled, and then broke in half.

After seeing the lapis in my fist, I look up. The sky has darkened into a shade of midnight blue. Millions or more stars and galaxies light the sky. It’s so amazing, it transfixes me into staring and wondering about all the existences beyond now.

The dream ends.

I always feel young but pensive in this dream, and elated but thoughtful when I awaken. I don’t know what change I’m going through now. I’m not moving or starting a new job. One of my cats is probably dying (I’d be surprised if he’s alive when this year ends), but that change affects him more than me. I can argue, though, no, it’s the survivors who remain behind after another dies who are more affected (as far as we know), because we, left behind, are dealing with a void.

Writing about it helps me think and understand. I remember thinking the other day, in a moment of pique, crystallizing a decision that I am re-inventing myself. Perhaps I’ve triggered some internal change, summoning the dream.

Maybe it’s all just wistful thinking and vivid imagination. Perhaps that’s all life is.

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Multiple Dreams

I had multiple dreams last night. Most remain in pieces in my mind like debris after a storm. The essences:

  1. I was plotting a murder and intent on carrying it out. I don’t know who I was killing or my motive.
  2. A cat was the size of an American nickel. A happy little animal, he was kept in a jar. I watched over him, ensuring he wasn’t lost or injured, and played with him.
  3. The third dream found me playing a game that may have been a show on television. I was winning by answering questions and advancing through levels. It seemed to combine physical prowess and the ability to answer questions.

Not much further information is available on the murder dream. Awakening and thinking about it, I attribute it more to my writing muses than an intention to kill another person. I’m always thinking about escaping, surviving, killing, investigating, flying, traveling, exploring, and robbing places. They’re exercises for my imagination, IMO.

The cat dream was a simple anxiety dream. Quinn hasn’t been well. His breathing bothered us. We’d endured a summer of wildfire smoke and hazardous air, so I put his breathing problems down to that. We’d been keeping him inside and addressing his breathing issues. When he didn’t improve after the air improved, I thought I’d take him in for an antibiotic shot.

But the vet found a lump on Quinn’s neck, so we’re going through the challenge of treating him, keeping him hydrated, and feeding him. We’re not certain of his issue, yet. Never a large cat, he dropped two pounds and now weighs just five. He’s mostly perky, though, but not eating and drinking enough on his own. I take comfort and hope in signs like him rubbing up against me, jumping on my lap, stretching, trying to claw furniture, and yawning.

Meanwhile, I’m going through the process of letting him go. I’ve endured this with other pets, so I understand some of the emotional, physical, and intellectual dynamics. It’s always different, of course, and it’s never easy.

I enjoyed the game show dream. First, you’d press a button to start the big wheel spinning, and press the button again to stop it. The big wheel had activities and numbers. If it landed on the activity, you did it. Doing the activity, such as twenty push-ups, authorized you to rob a competitor by taking a token or moving them back by a spin on the punishing wheel.

If the big wheel landed on a number, that was the number of spaces you’d move. Climbing, crawling, jumping, and swinging on ropes were required to move along squares. After moving forward and stopping on a square, you were asked a question. Fall to answer it correctly — it was timed, but you had three chances — meant you faced the punishment wheel.

Come to think of it, there was a television audience cheering us on. Writing about it today prompts comparisons to an updated game of Life combined with Trival Pursuit, which sums up my writing life, I think.

Spinning wheels, killing time, chasing trivia, and hoping to advance, it’s a writer’s life.

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Killers

Emphysema, they told him. Eyes twinkling, he chuckled with charming nonchalance (gasping for air when he did), because that was his style, and because he already knew. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said after the chuckle, although the panic in his gut said, “This is no joke.”

They put him on all that shit, and gave him oxygen to suck on, and advised him of the things that he must give up. He gave up the shit and kept the rest. Yeah, there was unbearable pain every day and hour, but it was the loneliness and regrets who were the killers.

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Mr Sigh

He sighs when he wakes up, realizing it’s another day, and sighs when he gets out of bed, stands, and sits, motions stiff with pain. Sighs slip out as he makes his meals and eats them, and as he reflects on his life. Sighs accompany every task, as if his world is filled with strife. Sighing, he works hard to do what he can, trying to get by, contemplating his death, sighing, holding on, and trying to stay alive.

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Before Time Lies

Before time lies

and says you died

and that maybe you never were

find the sun

and get things done

stroke a cat and feel a purr

look into yourself

for what you want to be

and how you want to live

before time lies

and says time to die

and you find that it’s the end

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Three Strange Dreams

Three strange dreams afflicted me last night, one after enough in a line of dreams.

  • I dreamed I’d removed my penis from my body and was making pencil sketches of it that I shared with others. There was no blood loss or discomfort. I was showing the drawings to friends and families, and was holding my penis in my hand. They never noticed that I was holding my penis, but were surprised and appalled by my sketches (which were very realistic, in that style of drawing that I used to do).
  • The second dream placed me in an uncomfortable backwoods setting. I was with people that reminded me of the folks I knew in West Virginia. These folks are hard, shallow, and bitter people, with little empathy. Their circumstances might make them that way (although I also think, if it’s so fucking terrible, why don’t you leave and find something better?). I was looking for change to make a call. They weren’t concerned with that, but instead obsessed with how ignorant I was. This was because I’d found change in a stream (a quarter and a penny), but a dead body was in the stream. They thought I was going to get sick by getting in water with a dead body. I insisted on doing it because I needed the change. I thought there was more there, so after looking elsewhere, I returned to the stream and searched. As I did, I looked at the dead body, which turned out to be a large, black dog. I wondered how he died and arrived in the water, and hoped that he hadn’t suffered.
  • In the third dream, I was in an all-white place, like a ship, wearing an all-white flight suit. Others were there, dressed in the same way. There was no one familiar to me but I knew them in the dream. We were concerned mostly with the toilets, and which toilet to use, and why the toilets was dirty, and whether the toilets worked. I was less concerned about this, and kept trying to direct the conversation and activity to something other than fucking toilets, but it was a challenge; these people were obsessed with the damn toilets. We finally got around to other things, like, hey, we’re supposed to be flying. An involved conversation about who was supposed to be doing what, like flying, developed. I was dismayed and perplexed by how the others all wanted to assign people narrow tasks. Moving off by myself, I went ahead and flew. That impressed others, who weren’t aware that I could fly, and peppered me with questions about how I’d learned and what else I could do. Their questions amazed me. I told them, it wasn’t hard, I’d always known how, people only made it hard for themselves by thinking they had to be special to do things.

Yeah, weird dreams. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Anchors

You ever think about someone who passed, and realized that although you rarely saw them, they were an anchor, someone who moored the foundations of your life, and although little has physically changed in your life with their passing, everything is different, because one of your mooring anchors is gone?

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Overheard 3

“I was in my Mom’s room with my sister when Mom died. Mom and Dad lived in a remote area, surrounded by cedars. It was quiet. Mom had been ready to die. She’d actually done checklists. She’d written pages of very precise notes that she wanted done before she died. My sister and I had to do these things, and check them off, and show them to her, to show her that they’d been done.

“When they were all done, Mom said, “Okay, I’m ready to go now.” And she died that day.

“And I remember sitting in the room, and watching this soft blue glow rise from her body and drift out the window, and up into the trees, and on into the sky. It was like watching a puff of smoke, but I’m sure it was her soul.

“When it was gone, I turned to my sister and said, “Did you see that?” She said, “No, but I wish I did, because I could see you watching it.””

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Just Made It

You ever go to a restaurant, and find it quiet and with few customers, and then sit and order, and witness a sudden influx of people entering the restaurant and filling up the chairs, the noise level rising with their conversation and laughter?

Or maybe you reach the cashier in a store to make your purchases, and have no line, and then long lines form at all the registers?

These situations cause us to say, “Wow, we timed that right. We beat the rush.”

Traveling, we made it back home on Sunday. The weather served plunging temperatures and several inches of snow that night. “We made it home just in time.”

That thought, that somehow, you beat the crowds, the odds, the norms, the system, by just a little, fires a warm glow of satisfaction. It’s a little less satisfying when you fly home and see someone, and then they die the next day. Sure, there’s still some solace as we tell ourselves, “At least we saw them one more time before they died,” but the glow isn’t as warm nor satisfying.

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The Ice Chip

It’s five thirty A.M., and cold and dark. Even the cats are all curled up and asleep.

The telephone connection is amazingly clear. The tension in the hospital room seems as substantial as the phone against my ear.

“She’s gurgling, and sounds wet,” the speech therapist said. “I’m going to see what she can swallow.”

Her voice becomes louder as she speaks to the elderly patient. “I’m concerned about your ability to swallow. Can you lick you lips? Can you lick your lips?”

Holding the phone, I lick my lips in response to the orders on the other end and urge the patient to do the same.

“No? You can’t lick them? No saliva?”

Damn.

“Okay. I’d like to give you an ice chip to see how you swallow. Would you like an ice chip?”

“Yes,” the patient says in a low, weak gravel.

“Yes, I bet you would,” the speech therapist says. “You’re probably pretty thirsty because you haven’t been able to swallow anything for a couple days.

“Can you stick your tongue out for me? Can you put it out a little further? There we go. Good, that’s good. Now, I’m going to put the ice chip on your tongue, okay? There we are. Good. Now take it in your mouth and let it melt. Feels good, doesn’t it? Yes, I bet it does. Don’t let it run out of your mouth okay? Keep it in your mouth.

“Okay, are you ready to swallow? Swallow it for me. Let me see you swallow. Okay, that’s good.”

I hear an odd sound and listen, trying to understand what it is. I imagine the process it takes to let ice melt, and the muscles and passages used to swallow.

The speech therapist’s volume drops to a normal conversational level. “She couldn’t swallow, and I can hear wet gurgling.”

That was probably the odd sound that I heard.

The speech therapist says, “The fluid is going down into her airways. Normally, when that happens, we violently cough. That’s a normal reaction. But she lacks the strength and energy to cough.”

My sister-in-law speaks. “She’s in advanced stages of Parkinson’s, and hasn’t had her meds for several days, because she’s had the flu and pneumonia, and hasn’t been able to swallow. They’re going to insert an NG tube and begin her meds again.”

“Yes, we’d expect to see an improvement in a Parkinson’s patient with their meds, so we’ll try the test again after the NG tube is inserted and her meds are given.”

Thanks are given, and comments about things that will be done later are made. I listen and absorb it, but I remain thinking about the importance of a melting ice chip and swallowing.

 

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