Tuesday, August 09, 2005

What Dreams May Come

The sun. The sun was touching my face and it wasn't burning. In fact it felt good. It felt sort of healthy and warming not scalding and hurtful like... like... like it really does to me.

Ah, this was a dream. My first clue to the subconscious that I was actually asleep and experiencing one of my livid dreams. Interesting. Interesting was the fact that I was feeling the sun and enjoying it versus shying away and seeking shade to protect myself from its burning rays eating my skin.

I turned my face upward and squinted my eyes against the sun's brightness and let it warm my face more. I noticed I was sitting in long grass with a gentle breeze blowing. On the side of a rounded downward sloping hill that overlooked a large field of green grass. The grass seemed conformly about a foot long swaying in the gentle breeze like waves on water. The field of grass was surrounded by thick woods that gave the whole area a feeling of containment yet hinted at adventure beyond.

There was a haze. A haze like those in the old movies when the camera would do a head shot of the heroine and she was supposed to look beautiful and all hazy and dreamy. You know what I mean... sort of out of focus a bit as if to hide her imperfections. Well, that's the kind of hazy this was, too. But when I was dreaming it I wasn't thinking about what the haziness may be hiding. I wasn't thinking of why it was "out of focus". I didn't think about that at all because soon after I noticed the haze and was looking around at the hasiness of everything that's when I heard Charles' voice.

"Sorry I haven't come to visit you like I promised, Bone." he said as if I knew he was sitting right there beside me all along.

Sitting beside me on the hill overlooking the waving grassy field below us and he wasn't there a moment ago. I wasn't startled. It seems like I should have been but I wasn't. I turned to look at him and he was smiling while he examined the fluffy head of a dandelion gone to seed. He was young and healthy and so very alive. I suddenly knew I was young, too. Let's say we were probably both in our teens or early twenties. He continued to examine the dandelion and looked so happy and contented. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then blew the dandelion parachutes into the wind in a single burst of white fluffiness that was swept away from us and out over the field of waving grass below us.

"Sorry, I haven't come to visit you," he started again.

"That's okay," I interrupted. "I understand." But I didn't. I just didn't want him to have to apologize for anything. I wanted him to stay here with me like this in the hazy sunlight sitting on the hill by the grassy meadow. It felt so right. It felt so real. It felt so peaceful.

"I will do it but it's taking longer than I had thought it would," he began again as if I hadn't interrupted at all. "But I thought I would come this way and tell you that I hadn't forgotten and to make sure you were all right."

"I'm okay." I said without thinking and I meant it at that moment.

"Are you?"

I didn't answer and looked away from his eyes for a moment. This was only a dream, I reminded myself. This wasn't real.

I looked back up from picking a blade of grass from between my crossed legs and he was looking intently at me and still smiling with a single blade of long grass dangling from his lips as he chewed it. That silly impish look he could get about him that made him look like a mischievous devil in a blond-headed innocent boy's body.

"Yeah, I'm making it," I lied. He knew. I could see it in his face but he didn't press me on it or even stop smiling but only looked out over the meadow to give me a chance to blush privately.

"Charles, can I ask you some questions?"

Was that a twinkle of delight in his eyes as he turned to me? "I knew you would have lots of questions," he said with a definite twinkle of delight. There was understanding and love beaming from him. "Yeah, it's okay to ask me questions."

And I began to ask my questions. All the questions that would come flooding out of me about what was it like and where was he at and was he happy and was there really a heaven like we thought of it and what was God really like and and and and and

and

I don't remember a thing he told me.

But he did answer every one of my questions very openly and without hesitation. We laughed and he assured me it was all so much better than I could imagine and that I didn't have anything to be afraid of. I don't remember the words he told me even though the whole time I kept thinking I needed to remember all of this because it was so awesome and would change my life forever. I don't remember the exact words, but I remember the feelings.

The feeling of peace. The feeling of love. The feeling of a cumbersome burden of pain and sorrow being lifted off of me because there was nothing to be pained or sorrowed over. It was all great and just dandy, according to Charles. Even though I don't remember his words. He still got the message across.

Then I woke up.

I woke up like this for the last three nights and each time have experienced the frustration of not being able to remember what Charles was telling me about the mysteries of the great beyond. I work all day to regain the feelings of peace and love and loss of burden that Charles gave me but have failed miserably. Why can't I remember? Why can't I retain the blissful feelings he brought me?