supplicium post mortem

I’m going to try to write this without turning into a sobbing mess, and also without turning into a crazy person who gets locked away in a mental hospital.

This afternoon I had a nap. I dreamed it was raining, like it’s been here the last two days. I felt that I needed a wee, and this segued into the idea that Mr. Prior was going to see Casey, and gosh she hoped he would let her go have a wee and not have to wait. They were outside, sort of in the neighborhood here, and we heard RP moving some furniture around in the old study, to arrange things for the scene. And it was so comforting to hear that and to be with someone who did that. Casey wandered under some newish, young wisteria leaves, and the leaves brushed lightly against her face and head, just shielding her from the rain.

And then Mr. Prior was there, finding her. “A lot has changed, hasn’t it?” he said. “Like a big, gray hat.”

And then, in a flash of recognition—that he was there, but not there, not for long—she threw her arms around him. He had on his white shirt and black trousers, and it’s possible in the dream that he was taller than she was, like RP “really” always was. And she said something to him that I can’t remember, about him being there, really being there, physically in the flesh, because she could feel him and he was so warm and solid and smelled like himself and everything. I think she asked him where—WHERE—he had gone. And he said she should hug him and then say a little prayer for him, that he was going away and going to his maker (except it didn’t sound corny in the dream, it sounded so sincere and so delicate and so him) and that she should—

She interrupted him and clung to him even tighter, saying No No NO! And then he was going away, and we were waking up, and she was holding on as tight as she could ever hold on to anything, yelling that she wouldn’t allow it…

FYI, that hope at the start of this entry isn’t going very well.

There have been countless—and I mean that literally—times since he died that I’ve sobbed so hard I thought something physical would break, so hard I felt maybe it could kill me. This was one of those times, and it carried on even after I got up off the bed and went for a wee and got  a glass of seltzer and did the bodily things that usually accompany the exhausted calm after a paroxysm of grief. Except that it carried on, and I was still shaking, and Casey was breathing in that shallow catching way, and sobbing, and I felt in the twilight of madness, as if I might encounter Ophelia or Hamlet. And I wanted to do something Desperate, but I couldn’t think of anything to do.

This is the first time that Casey had her own dream about Mr. Prior of the type I have about M. I used to have those dreams a lot. He’s here again. He’s back. He isn’t dead. Even, I know he’s dead but he’s here just for a moment. I hate those dreams. I really hate them. They’re cruel. Lately I haven’t had them much.

Then this morning I did have one:

It was early morning in my kitchen, and M was back. In this dream, he hadn’t actually been dead ever, just unconscious so much that everyone thought he was dead. But now he was back! I was so glad to see him, and there was a feeling of ultimate ordering and rightness. Everything was in the right place in the world, and none of the suffering that had come before mattered any more. I kept touching him, embracing parts of him, and again he was so physically, tangibly present. I thought of the life insurance money I’d have to pay back, and how difficult that would be, but I knew it didn’t matter and that we’d work it out. He was tired and curled up in a ball on the kitchen table. I convinced him to come to the bed, which was still unmade from me getting out of it.

“See,” I said, “your part is still there, and your pillow.” I smoothed it so he could lie down.

Then I remembered his job—the job he had held when he died—was actually open again. [This is true in RL, and also in RL it is a job I applied for 3 times after he died, but was rejected for 3 times, for confusing political reasons.] In the dream I had an epiphany: it all made sense why I had been rejected from this ex-job of his I wanted so much, and why they’d been through two other people since he left and had the position open yet again—it was a Divine plan, and now he could have his job back! I didn’t want to overwhelm him explaining all this, but I told him his job was open and they were desperate for someone and he should call, or let me call for him, ASAP. And like the sense of ultimate order at his presence, this coincidence of the job felt like a kind of justice. My suffering had not been senseless or for nothing. It was all a part of something good the whole time. Because he was home!!! And even though he still had the aneurysm and could in fact die any time, or live on for years, I didn’t care because he was there in that moment, and I knew that was all that mattered, and the future didn’t matter, and the past didn’t matter, only now, here, with him, so tangible and so real.

That was 6 o’clock this morning. Twelve hours later, Casey had her dream. I don’t understand all the symbols in these dreams. I don’t have the will to try.

Dear God, we really cannot take these dreams any longer, and we cannot take the reality either. We are bleeding everywhere there is to bleed. We are boring everyone with this same message. Please. Please. Where is the volume knob that turns loud enough to make you hear?

Please.