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Mar. 11th, 2019 12:03 pm
Pain makes you beautiful
Liver Laddoo and I talked shortly before bedtime. At least he finally has a tentative diagnosis for his health issues but it'll be a week before the neurologist can see him and who knows how long after that to schedule the spinal tap, which may or may not be enough to resolve everything. He's, understandably, bummed and bored with being home from work and having no real social life.
One of the last things we talked about was dreams. We both agreed there's not much significance too be wrung from them. He shared that his recurring fleeing dream is from rising floodwaters because of a childhood trauma. (It made me realise how untraumatised I was by Hurricane Eloise when I was five, perhaps because of how easy it was for our family to find a place of refuge.) I joked that the conversation would be enough to give me flood dreams. It didn't, of course, but sharing the kind of dreams I have of Monshu did guarantee that I had one.
I "woke up" and was lying in the bed looking across the room. Monshu was sitting there facing me. At first it looked like he was on another bed, then like he was in a big box of some sort, like a refrigerator box. He was folding clothes.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm doing the laundry," he responded, as if it couldn't be more self-evident.
And then that moment came that always does in dreams like these: I realised he didn't know he was dead and I was faced with the dilemma of whether to inform him or not. I'm not sure why I feel like I need to. I'd had a dream a couple of days earlier in which I remembered Monshu "dying twice"--first for real, and then coming back and having to die all over again. Maybe I was trying to prevent that? Or maybe I didn't want what I'd been through three years ago ignored.
In any case, what I said was, "First of all, even when you were around, I did the laundry. And second, you don’t need to do it because you’re dead." He gave me a sceptical look. I must've been out of the bed now, since I was only about arm's length away. He told me he didn't believe me.
"Why would I make that up?"
"To make yourself sound more important."
I remember sighing and looking away for a moment. "I don't think I talk about you that much. But when I do, it's because you're the most important thing to ever happen to me. So that makes losing you really significant."
I didn't wake up satisfied from the dream, but at least it was without the same sense of sadness that I've had other times. Although I miss him terribly, I no longer really wish he would come back. I don't want to have the face the agony of losing him all over again. When I wish I still had him, I wish that he had simply never developed cancer, that everything in our lives from sometime in 2014 onward had taken a different turn.
But that's five years ago now. I'd be wishing away more than a tenth of my life--an extremely difficult decile, but one that I've sunk a tremendous amount of effort into. I'd be exchanging five years of powerful experiences for five mystery years in a burlap sack. The more time goes by, the less willing I am to make that swap.
One of the last things we talked about was dreams. We both agreed there's not much significance too be wrung from them. He shared that his recurring fleeing dream is from rising floodwaters because of a childhood trauma. (It made me realise how untraumatised I was by Hurricane Eloise when I was five, perhaps because of how easy it was for our family to find a place of refuge.) I joked that the conversation would be enough to give me flood dreams. It didn't, of course, but sharing the kind of dreams I have of Monshu did guarantee that I had one.
I "woke up" and was lying in the bed looking across the room. Monshu was sitting there facing me. At first it looked like he was on another bed, then like he was in a big box of some sort, like a refrigerator box. He was folding clothes.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm doing the laundry," he responded, as if it couldn't be more self-evident.
And then that moment came that always does in dreams like these: I realised he didn't know he was dead and I was faced with the dilemma of whether to inform him or not. I'm not sure why I feel like I need to. I'd had a dream a couple of days earlier in which I remembered Monshu "dying twice"--first for real, and then coming back and having to die all over again. Maybe I was trying to prevent that? Or maybe I didn't want what I'd been through three years ago ignored.
In any case, what I said was, "First of all, even when you were around, I did the laundry. And second, you don’t need to do it because you’re dead." He gave me a sceptical look. I must've been out of the bed now, since I was only about arm's length away. He told me he didn't believe me.
"Why would I make that up?"
"To make yourself sound more important."
I remember sighing and looking away for a moment. "I don't think I talk about you that much. But when I do, it's because you're the most important thing to ever happen to me. So that makes losing you really significant."
I didn't wake up satisfied from the dream, but at least it was without the same sense of sadness that I've had other times. Although I miss him terribly, I no longer really wish he would come back. I don't want to have the face the agony of losing him all over again. When I wish I still had him, I wish that he had simply never developed cancer, that everything in our lives from sometime in 2014 onward had taken a different turn.
But that's five years ago now. I'd be wishing away more than a tenth of my life--an extremely difficult decile, but one that I've sunk a tremendous amount of effort into. I'd be exchanging five years of powerful experiences for five mystery years in a burlap sack. The more time goes by, the less willing I am to make that swap.