lucyoncolorado

Some other dreams I've had in the ten months since H died...

1. H laughing at us. I asked her why. She said we were all stuck in traffic. Nonsense dream; I’m sure I was worrying if J would make it home OK since I didn’t get him up on time, but the smile and big sunglasses and laugh were so real.

2. Next H red and bloated like she was at the viewing but laid out on a piece of ice- how it is done in India. The ice cracked when I walked into the room.

3. I was washing dishes and washed the red goblet I took from her apartment and noticed it was cracked all the way around so I had to throw it away.

4. Dreamed that it was all a huge misunderstanding. I don’t remember the logic or much about the dream except that at one point K and I were in a room with H. Everyone shocked and surprised to see her. H walked with some people in front of us into another room and I turned to K to smile and exchange a look of “how awesome is this”- sort of punching the air with our fists.

5. Usually something shakes me awake right as I fall into sleep. Some sound or thought and I’m up in a panic. H’s voice calling “her daughter's name” as clear as if she were right next to me.

6. H was brought back to life but also put under arrest for suicide. We were allowed to visit her one by one in a small room where she sat in a chair to receive us. B went in first. Then it was my turn. I tried to tell her I was sorry I took her for granted, sorry I wasn’t there, wanted nothing but to help. She was smiling, but fake. She was cold and fake and superficial, almost cruel. And it didn’t look like her. I was suspicious that it was not really her. Still, I hugged her anyway and told her I loved her. She took it like a stranger, smiling fake. In the hall again, I found B and asked her what she thought. B said she thought she’d suffered brain damage- body here but different person altogether. So either way, she’s gone.

7. I was sitting on the toilet taking a dump when suddenly I delivered a baby. I caught it right before it hit the tile so that it didn’t bust open its head. I took it immediately to the hospital because it didn’t cry. It had blue eyes. I told the doc I couldn’t really have had a child. He argued with me that it had, in fact, happened. I outlined my points. First, I was never pregnant. Second, there was no placenta. Third, there was no umbilical cord. Doc just shrugged; it happens sometimes. Frustration and confusion. I call K to tell her what happened. She tells me that H has not been cremated yet and is still on ice. For a moment, I think that's not possible. I start naming reasons it can't be true. I realize the only explanation is that I'm dreaming. Which is a relief because it means H isn't dead. But I wake up and she is.

8. I'm in a classroom and H is at the desk. It is in the past. I tell H that she is going to kill herself. I told her so, and it was hard to tell her, and she took it decently well enough- didn’t seem as surprised as you’d expect. I tell her she's already dead where I'm from and she doesn't understand how much I miss her and how desperate I am to talk to her about it. She doesn't have any answers; she doesn't take it seriously and she just laughs. I give her a hug and she laughs and laughs. It's like having my guts ripped out.

9. We are at her house. It's the past again. She's online looking something up on Pinterest. I was trying to hide her online obituary from her, but when she wanted to know why I kept taking over the computer, I just told her that she was going to die, and she just accepted it. Not me, but for her. I tried to grab her by the shoulders and make her look at me and fight it. I told her if I could just get her to fight it or really think about it then it would change but she just accepted it and her eyes were dead already.

10. We are at the dive bar on the bay in my home town where we used to hang in high school. I was with R, K, L, C, B and H was with me. She was dead. She knew it. We all knew it. I told her that it was cool to dream of her dead and normal because usually in my dreams she's a zombie or she's not dead yet or she's just out of reach somehow. She looked at me in that annoyed with love way that says I'm being foolish and she is just tolerating me. Then she laughed. Strange how live and real her voice and her laugh were. She told me she visits people in dreams all the time and that she has visited my dreams a number of times and that if I'm having nightmares, it's me and my issues and not her ghost. I have mixed feelings about that, and I started to argue with her, but instead I decided to try to be open and sincere and embrace the moment for what it was and I tried to tell her what she means and how sorry I am for taking her for granted. There was real love and vulnerability- I felt blown apart. We had this chat in a car (whose?) with H in a front passenger seat and me in the back behind her- she was turned around to look at me and she looked fresh, healthy and happy. I kept telling her how weird it was that she is dead, and for a moment it scared me and I started to fear that surge of passion and panic a bit and think about that really awful evil energy from the night she died but she didn't turn into a zombie and just looked at me annoyed about my change again and I checked myself and tried really hard to be brave and open and trust. That was the meat of the dream, but also there was some silliness. Earlier (before we got in the car), we'd all been thrown out of the bar for getting into a wonderful brawl and someone had punched out H's car window. Or maybe she had punched it out herself- I can't remember. It was all lively and ridiculous and we kept laughing.