Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Dream


I am siting in my pajamas in the dining room in our center hall colonial when the front door swings open and a friend peers in and calls my name.  Startled and angry, I pull a blanket around myself and yell at her to leave.

I dash (something I cannot do!) up two flights of stairs as she wails, "But you were so angry that we stopped coming around after Josh died!"  "That was when I looked like me!" I yell backward.

I reach the landing on third floor between Josh's and Matt's rooms, where I encounter another young man, a complete stranger.

"And who on earth are you?" I demand. 

He gives me a name and tells me that Matt said  that he could live here.

"In my house? Without my knowledge or permission?" I am really angry now.

**********

Drug-induced dreams?  Or a revelation of reality?

Other people? Right response, wrong time.

Me? Scared and inadequate to the task.  

Cancer? The stranger who had settled in before I knew he had arrived.

Death? Outside Josh's door.

**********

I've quit the narcotics.

**********

Editorial comments:  This, remember, is a dream.  My friends are amazing.  All kinds of friends in all kinds of ways.  But one of the things uppermost in my mind these days is the overall difference in experience ~ for me ~ between losing a child and losing a breast. 

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