lucyoncolorado

I don't think visitations or ghosts or life after death are true (and moreover, I don't want them to be true) but being objectively sure that something didn't really happen doesn't change the fact that you believe it while it's happening. In any case, I'm not so foolish as to not accept peace that is offered to me, regardless of how it happened.

This isn't how I normally post my dreams. This one has left me with some pretty weird feelings all day. And it's hard to write about so I'm just going to ramble it all out as it comes to me without worrying at all about writing correctly or choosing the right words or whatever. It was very intense.

I'm walking through a hall in a dark noisy restaurant when I think I see H. I see people who look like her at first glance all the time out in public, but this time she recognizes me also and comes up with a HEEEYY!!! for a hug. It scares me at first, then I realize it really is her- inexplicably. She looks good- healthy and smiling. Her hair is cut like right after C was born. She's vibrant.

Something must've changed for me in recent months because I felt none of the usual desperation to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her or somehow convince her to stop, think, ask for help, turn back time, or any of the other typical intense feelings that usually accompany these dreams. Instead, I just think, oh- she's here right now. It's OK. Make use of the time.

And the dream then took on that shiny, ringing, clear quality that I've come to associate with lucidity. I knew I was dreaming. I tried really hard to focus. It felt like an intense effort because I kept getting distracted by things and then redirecting my focus on H again.

We were sitting in the same side of a restaurant booth. It was noisy and dark all around us. H's hair was longer now, just above her shoulders and curly. She was leaned against the wall and I was facing her with my back to the aisle. I kept getting a creepy feeling on my back and I kept having fleeting thoughts that she would change at any minute. That she would become a zombie or that she'd start to look decayed. At any moment, I expected her brains to explode out of her skull, but then I remembered- no, it wasn't a gunshot. I looked at her arms, expecting to see them covered in blood, but then I thought- no it wasn't slit wrists either. I started to wonder what it was, how had she done it, and I could feel a memory deep down in me, of her drained of color on the couch, slumped over, of her mashing up pills in the kitchen, and then I pushed it away- I wasn't there, I didn't see that, here she is now, maybe it didn't happen. Disbelief is a powerful thing, and the horror of it all started rising up in me- it was real, I thought of H bloated and wet in the viewing, but I pushed the memory down, down, down. I had to focus on what was in front of me. It was like staving off panic. I wanted to run or shut my eyes and fall back into a deep sleep, but I really did latch ahold of some deep strength or trust down in me and ran with it. This was H, not a zombie, not a body, maybe a ghost. I had to go with it.

So I forced myself to look at her very carefully. This is the part I can't really describe because her face was very real. It was really like looking into her eyes, looking at her face, her smile. I kept saying, wow- I've missed your face. She laughed a lot. I put my hand on her face and asked if this was weird. She seemed very deep and serious at times, very patient, then she'd laugh. Meanwhile, I kept feeling the dream slipping away and it was really difficult to stay in it. I would try to think about what to say- it seemed there was something very important I needed to say- and the more I'd try to think about it, the more the dream would get away from me and so I had to keep refocusing on her face which was seriously vibrant and as real as if it weren't a dream at all.

I told her I loved her. I've done this every time I've dreamed about her, and this time it was very clear and we seemed to mostly be on the same page. She told me she loved me. She had not done that in any other dreams. At one point, I did ask her what the hell she had been thinking. I don't even think words exist to express the disbelief- I mean, there is a confusion that's unsettling. I just can't understand it. I need an explanation. Like if I can get the missing piece and put the puzzle together then I can undo it all. What was going through her mind? She looked away and seemed very distant and slightly annoyed- the way she was when she wanted to avoid a topic or deflect or when I was being tedious. I apologized. I told her that I was sorry for not having been a good friend lately, and I told her how I kept replaying all the signs I missed and that I was so sorry. She seemed resolved. She seemed to have deep regret too, but it was something that could be tapped into rather than something that was raging on the surface. It seemed like she was telling me to move on already, but I could tell it bothered her. It was the same response that she had the morning after she was arrested and I went in angry to confront her. Her response showed that she had already internalized how much she'd fucked up and that now what she needed was for everyone to let it alone.

Then it was her face again, so real. It was like a flashing series of her face - laughing when we were young, intense when we were having serious conversations, patiently irritated when I was being immature. Different hair styles and different ages- images of her flashing before me.

After that, we were sitting at a table now in the middle of the restaurant. I refocused my lucidity again and thought about how real it all felt. I could simultaneously feel myself in bed- I could feel the pressure of my eyelids. But here I was, everything as vivid and detailed as if I were awake, sitting at a table with H. We agreed that it was real. I asked her about what it was like being dead. These didn't seem like the right words though, because here she was, as real as can be. She started talking about some issue with some women in the place where she exists now. I couldn't really understand what she meant. Apparently they had some task that they had to carry out together. I asked if it was like heaven? It wasn't that exactly. She was less interested (or unable) in telling me exactly what it was like being dead and more interested in talking about this particular disagreement that she was having with some women who were also in this place/space/whatever. I thought to myself, this is typical of our conversations.

I fell asleep. I lost lucidity. It happened while trying to follow H's story.

I'm at my neighbor E's house. A small black dog has come up in her yard. The dog plays with my dog. I notice that it has a collar, and I call the owner. He says he lives upstairs- could I bring him the dog?

There is a stairwell leading up the pecan tree in my front yard, and at the top is the long gated corridor of an apartment complex. I push open the gate I see two shiba inus. They run to the edge of the platform and look down to the ground as if they are about to jump over back towards my yard. I stand very still and call them towards me, assuming that one of them is Saskia. But they come to me and I see that they are both strange shibas. Right as I scoop them up into my arms, the door at the end of the corridor opens and a shirtless middle aged thin smoking man comes out. He's wearing sunglasses and jeans and has the leathery skin of a man who's had too much sun. He calls the dogs- all three are his.

I'm riding in a car with E now. She's on the left and I'm on the right. The car is like a go-cart; we sit on top of it. I have the steering wheel but no brakes. I realize the brakes must be on her side, and I tell E to coordinate with me so that we can drive. She says we should switch sides. I ask her to grab the wheel. Just as I'm about to climb under her to switch over, I remember H.

I'm back in the restaurant. H is sitting at a different booth now. Across from her is a woman about our age. They are animated, discussing some drama involving people I don't know. They have their smart phones out and are texting someone about all this drama. She is still real, she is still vibrant, clear and healthy looking. But she's very engaged in the current moment. H was always very good at this, while I'm always spoiled the present by spending too much time in my own head or getting meta about every situation. Even now, I want to return to the question of what it is like being dead, what she was thinking when she did it, how she feels about it now. I want something deep and life changing to happen. She listens to me say these things, but she's clearly moved on to another conversation. I have no interest in the woman sitting across from her. H has always had a lot of friends. Some stay around for years, some come and go. Because I'm judgey or perhaps even snobby, I've never understood most of her friendships outside our own trio. They were mostly (not always, but most of them) transient and uninteresting- shallow relationships with uninteresting people based entirely on shared conditions / work places / drama. This isn't always true of course- some of her friends were amazing people. But in between all the really interesting and serious boyfriends and all the really deep and creative friendships were dozens of random and uninteresting short term affairs and third wheel women who I knew would not be in her life more than just a few weeks and therefore I never put out any effort towards getting to know them. To me, H had a brighter spark than the vast majority of the people in her life. And I looked at this woman, summed her up and dismissed her. Then I started to feel a little jealous that I had to share my time with H with another random person.

I thought all of that in a second and also hated myself for being such a bitch about it and for trying to make the moment about me. Clearly, H had given me a visitation, and here I was asking for more and continuing to misunderstand her. What I've learned since she died is how deeply she could live a moment. She lived in the present, and she was always willing to share other people's experiences in that same moment. And this is why her life was full of people everywhere she went. After she died, one of the things that was hard was recognizing this for the first time, feeling gratitude for having known her so well, and then immediately feeling regret and shame that I took it for granted when she was in my life. I'm too meta. I'm too judgemental. I don't experience the moment. And even as I was sitting there realizing this, I was thinking about all of this rather than joining in the moment with H and this other woman.

I sat back and shut up and listened to them talk. It became clear to me that they were talking about the same situation that H had tried to tell me about before. It was not something life-altering or deeply important. Just some issue in their daily life where-ever or whatever that is when you are dead. They were discussing what to do about different people. They were gossiping with some indignation about something that seemed rather petty to me, especially since the larger context involves the answer to what happens after you die and they seemed completley uninterested in discussing that at all as if it were a non-issue. And I realized that H was absolutely FINE. She was behaving in exactly the way she always had, handling everything the same way she always had, so she had adjusted and she was fine. This was H, living whatever this new life was, and being OK. It was a really peaceful feeling. She was totally wrapped up in the daily life of whatever situation she was in now, she had friends, I needed to stop trying to drag her out of that and back to the death and to my grief. It's not about me and it's not about the death. She knows I really did love her and would really do anything at all for her, and I got to tell her that. It was just something that happened in a moment- it doesn't change everything about her; we don't have to stay in that moment forever. Now she was moving on, and this conversation had nothing to do with me. She was gossiping and rolling her eyes about whatever it is that is happening in her life now. She is sharing a moment of indignation and friendship with this woman. I didn't need to barge in.

So I left.

Then the dream was flashing images again- mundane things including memories of times with H, but loads of things. The waterfall at Hamilton Pool. R before his hair turned grey. Washing dishes. Picking sticker burrs out of Lucy's feet. I could feel myself still in my bed, that eyelid pressure- and the images were overpowering. Someone says, "This is all there is. This is the way you go back home again." But I don't know what that means. When I think about going back home, I don't even know where that would be. Probably the words were just nonsense. The important thing was that I felt, really vividly and intensely, a desperation to continue being alive. I mean, a real desire to live. It is an almost tangible burning thing.

That was the end of the dream. The whole thing had taken place between snoozes on my alarm clock around 5 this morning. When I woke up, I didn't remember any of this for a few minutes, and then it all came flooding back to me when my husband asked if I'd had a nightmare. I had. I had forgotten. Earlier in the night- around 2 - I'd been sleeping on my side facing R with my back open to the bedroom. And I'd had a nightmare that a zombie or a ghost (the sort that has been haunting me since H died) was attacking my back- poking and tickling me and I couldn't move to stop it. I screamed, woke up, went to the bathroom, went back to sleep, forgot until R mentioned it. When he brought it up though, I remembered the feeling and then instantly remembered sitting in the booth with H staving off that panic- feeling that something was behind me but fighting to focus on staying in the dream with H. And then I remembered the rest of the dream that I just typed up.