A HAVE A DREAM. OR TWO. | redclaydiary.com

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or read his story below:

Life, actually…

I HAVE A DREAM. OR TWO.

I hope you will forgive me my vanity, my self-absorption, for two minutes. I want to share two dreams with you. They may have deep meaning, they may be interesting but meaningless. You and I can determine that. Here they are:

DREAM ONE: I’m in my childhood Down South home. My sister Barbara is here with me in the living room.

This dream is in color, unlike many of my dreams.

Outside, the sun is reflected in bright green hues off a row of large trees just across the street. The trees are waving and swaying under a strong breeze. They are not the trees I was brought up seeing. They are taller and more lush and most graceful in their rippling movements.

The living room is a combination of the way it looked when I was a child—hardwood floors and pastel walls—and the way it was up till the day Mother died—some antiques and more family memorabilia lying around.

Barbara is talking with me about something, but I’m beginning to ignore her because I can now hear my mother’s voice as if she is still alive. I can’t make out the words, but her musical voice is definitely in the room with us.

Then, I see my mother.

She is sitting on a hassock or footstool in the living room. I quickly hug her, enfolding her entire body in my arms, hoping to make sure she doesn’t get away from me this time. She is warm and small and self-contained and does not respond to the hug, nor does she pull away.

She is saying something again, and what she is saying is incomprehensible, but I can tell from the way it feels that she is in another place away from all of us, a place where she can deal with her own singular universe without having to be concerned for what’s happening on our block, in our world, in our family. She feels very real while I am hugging her, and then she is gone, as is the dream.

I wake up, staring at the wall, not daring to move, hoping the dream hasn’t gone but knowing that it will never happen again. This is the last communique from Mother.

THE FINAL DREAM: Soon after my father died, I saw him twice before he went away for good. Walking into the den of my parents’ home, I saw—out of the corner of my eye—my father, sitting in his easy chair, staring serenely into space, self-contained and comfortable with himself. When I looked directly at the chair, he wasn’t there.

A few days later, I dreamed that our wall held a large portrait of my father as he looked when young. He was hatless and wearing a three-piece dress suit. He stared directly at the room from within the portrait and his lips began to move. I could not tell what he was saying, but again I had the feeling he was letting me know he was all right, that things would go on without him but that he, too, would go on without us. He was in good shape, he was trying to tell me.

So, the parents are gone for good. I am here and they are there. This doesn’t seem to matter now, not to me, anyhow. I have this feeling we’ll not need each other again, nor will we ever see each other again—not here nor in the afterlife.

We’re all going our separate ways and the cosmos is too large for us to ever find one another. Instead, we’ll each go to our respective niches on our own tracks and continue to participate in nature as tiny atoms dispersing dispersing dispersing but never stopping.

Thanks for sharing with me these short minutes. You may now resume control of your beautiful life