Wednesday night I dreamed about my friend who passed away earlier this summer. It was the first time I’d had a dream about him, rather than a dream where a vague idea of him was just in the background. In the dream I was trying to find him, because we’d all learned he only had one more day to live. I spent most of the twenty-four hour period searching for him. I finally found him, on a busy sidewalk outside of a large building. He was surrounded by loved ones, and only twenty minutes remained until his scheduled death. I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, and as we hugged I sobbed and begged him not to die. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this. I love you. We all love you. Please don’t leave me,” I choked into his neck. He responded by smiling and laughing, and he said, “Don’t talk about that.” People were everywhere, and during the whole dream Johnny Cash’s version of Mercy Seat was playing, crescendoing, until the piano was deafening, every nerve and vein pulsing with it. Alex was ripped away, and the song kept playing, over and over, until I woke up.
Last night when I went to bed I couldn’t stop thinking about that dream, I couldn’t stop thinking about Alex. The bouts of grief don’t happen as often as they did at first, the spacing is longer between. But when they come, when they hit and wash over me they are far more intense. Last night I felt the weight of disbelief and anger crash over me and felt I couldn’t bear it, that I couldn’t take it. How can he be gone? How? I thought about sitting on the steps of the work shop behind the offices at work, next to a bucket of cigarette butts with sand and dirt and boxes containing faucets and windows. I thought about holding my cell phone, when my friend told me what happened, and how it seemed as if the ceiling of the world must be crashing down and my cell phone felt small and hot in my palm. When we hung up, I sat there, with my head in my hands, crying and whispering, no, no, no, no. Our accountant opened the door, saw me, handed me a box of tissues, and quietly closed the door behind me.
I thought about all the people who had Alex taken away. I thought about watching fireworks on the fourth, and how beautiful and fleeting they were. I thought about fighting back tears as they burst over us, because they were bright but went away. I thought about the photo of Alex’s mangled car, I thought about the billion things that made him good, I thought about his voice. I wondered again if he finished the Vonnegut book on CD he planned on listening to that day as he drove west. I hated the nature of my thoughts, I hated how trivial many of them seemed.
I sat in bed, panicking, and I wanted it gone, all gone, all out of my head. I wanted to hit my fist against my skull and knock it loose, shake it all away. I want so badly for it not to have happened. Perhaps I am having trouble comprehending that it is real, it is real. We can’t go back, I can’t skip back and change this. It is permanent. It can’t be changed. It can’t be changed. I can cling to all the beautiful things and memories, but a man under the influence of alcohol and drugs still drove on the wrong side of an interstate that night and killed a person that many people loved. And people everywhere, people everywhere every minute are losing bright spots in their worlds. They will cling to the beautiful bits, but it can’t be changed, and they will fight this fight, they are fighting this fight and everything keeps on going and ending and going some more.
I feel very feeble in my ability to understand what I am and why.
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What are you, and why?
black sheeped
