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Apr. 10th, 2020 03:41 pm
House of spirits
I see dead people.
In my dreams I see dead people. Every night. I've seen Monshu several times this week. Two nights ago, I came across him brooding about the loss of his leg and refusing to wear the prosthetic he'd been given. His severed leg was in a bag strung over his back, in such pristine condition it looked like the prosthetic at first. When I woke up, I thought how unlike him that would have been. The nurses and their aides always mentioned what a good patient he was. He seldom refused treatment, and then only with good reason. (Whenever anyone claimed he was unreasonable, it was a tip that they there were someone I needed to keep an eye on.)
The severed leg had a very prosaic origin: A Vikram Chandra short story I'd read the previous evening. The protagonist is an Indian military officer who starts experiencing phantom pain from a leg blown off during the Battle of Sylhet. Chandra devotes careful attention to his experiences with his prosthetic so it's not surprising that they pursued me in my sleep and found a way into my last dream of the night.
There's no such straightforward explanation for last night's dream. The dead person was my older brother, but his role was pretty minor. Bizarrely, in fact, his role was usurped. There was a long sequence at a snack shop which culminated with me getting annoyed with my family and stalking off, only to blow up again when my younger brother sat down at my table and started stealing food from my plate.
Again, that's not something he'd ever do in real life. However, it wouldn't be unheard of from my older brother, who was a notorious glutton. One of those treasured family quotes passed down over the years is "Did you just east my baby's food?" I no longer remember which baby it was, but there was only one adult it could've been directed towards. But I guess it'd hard to lay claim to your privileges in the dream realm when you can no longer assert them in real life.
I've been telling people lately that the years of grief have prepared me for this. Everyone around me is grieving these days. Very few, fortunately, have permanently lost anyone they love, but everyone is cut off from those they care about. Only some have lost jobs, but everyone is mourning the loss of gatherings and events and dreading the future loss of their favourite places and activities. I told a pal today I can't think about which local businesses I cherish will survive this because it's just too painful.
Obviously, these are all different kinds of grief, but the lessons and techniques you learn from surviving one sort of grief can be applied to other sorts. I've been isolated like this in my home before, though it wasn't a sense of social responsibility that kept me there but a depression that sapped my desire to spend time with people. As awful as it was, I survived it, so I know I can survive this as well. Others don't have that experience so that lack that confidence and I wish there were more I could do to help them.
In my dreams I see dead people. Every night. I've seen Monshu several times this week. Two nights ago, I came across him brooding about the loss of his leg and refusing to wear the prosthetic he'd been given. His severed leg was in a bag strung over his back, in such pristine condition it looked like the prosthetic at first. When I woke up, I thought how unlike him that would have been. The nurses and their aides always mentioned what a good patient he was. He seldom refused treatment, and then only with good reason. (Whenever anyone claimed he was unreasonable, it was a tip that they there were someone I needed to keep an eye on.)
The severed leg had a very prosaic origin: A Vikram Chandra short story I'd read the previous evening. The protagonist is an Indian military officer who starts experiencing phantom pain from a leg blown off during the Battle of Sylhet. Chandra devotes careful attention to his experiences with his prosthetic so it's not surprising that they pursued me in my sleep and found a way into my last dream of the night.
There's no such straightforward explanation for last night's dream. The dead person was my older brother, but his role was pretty minor. Bizarrely, in fact, his role was usurped. There was a long sequence at a snack shop which culminated with me getting annoyed with my family and stalking off, only to blow up again when my younger brother sat down at my table and started stealing food from my plate.
Again, that's not something he'd ever do in real life. However, it wouldn't be unheard of from my older brother, who was a notorious glutton. One of those treasured family quotes passed down over the years is "Did you just east my baby's food?" I no longer remember which baby it was, but there was only one adult it could've been directed towards. But I guess it'd hard to lay claim to your privileges in the dream realm when you can no longer assert them in real life.
I've been telling people lately that the years of grief have prepared me for this. Everyone around me is grieving these days. Very few, fortunately, have permanently lost anyone they love, but everyone is cut off from those they care about. Only some have lost jobs, but everyone is mourning the loss of gatherings and events and dreading the future loss of their favourite places and activities. I told a pal today I can't think about which local businesses I cherish will survive this because it's just too painful.
Obviously, these are all different kinds of grief, but the lessons and techniques you learn from surviving one sort of grief can be applied to other sorts. I've been isolated like this in my home before, though it wasn't a sense of social responsibility that kept me there but a depression that sapped my desire to spend time with people. As awful as it was, I survived it, so I know I can survive this as well. Others don't have that experience so that lack that confidence and I wish there were more I could do to help them.