In Dreams
They’d have been married 48 years today. That is, if you feel death is such a separation. For me, they’re still together. I frankly don’t even remember whether Virginia and I pledged “til death do us part,” as it seems impossible that a life together can be broken simply by death. Those most important to you, the ones that define you and provide for you and stand beside you in light and dark, are never really gone. In a way, Mom’s closer to me now than she was just a couple months ago, more present and profound in the drunkenness of dreamscape. And, when I listen to myself in the middle of night, work out my fears and setbacks and ambitions, I think of how death hasn’t parted us as I once expected. That the concerts and plays and movies Virginia and I still enjoy aren’t unshared. That the “weird” (Mom’s words) foods we savor wouldn’t continue to baffle or disgust her, even as she gave it her best (her last meal in our city was deep dish, so I can’t fault that poetic novelty). That every time I refocus this wandering imagination, I hear the whisper of some inane question or comment about why something is. How it is. That it is. And sometimes I answer, unspeaking, and I drift back off to sleep.
And in all this, I’ve been reconciling my own inevitable death, and imagining the memories I leave behind. In a quietly prideful way, I don’t feel that I’ve hurt anyone too badly in my time, though I’m regretful of the emotional distress I’ve inflicted on individuals over the course of my ego-driven artistic endeavors. Mom being one of them. It wasn’t intentional, but I was a child, selfish and ignorant. Self-indulgent and praise-hungry. And, really, only a bit less so now.
But I’m not worried about balancing a karmic ledger. At least, not as much as I was in years prior, when I thought every misjudgment was a world-ending catastrophe. I would rather strive to be a kind, supportive, curious voice in the memory of those I leave behind. Just as hers is to me. That’s the best I can hope for.
Yet I also hope that all who knew her are listening too. Or listening to the ones they’ve lost, be it in dreams or in bed, gazing into a wall of captured moonlight. And maybe talking back, out loud or within. Pulling the visions and lessons you’ve gained from that person and trying your damnedest to honor them and honor the things they loved. The ones they loved. And finding ways to move forward and celebrate the time you have left with them.
Should death do us all part, as it will, I can only hope to be remembered as I remember her. Not with frustration over things we’ve said to one another, the searing brattiness of an arrogant millennial combating the prudent stubbornness of a boomer, but with wistfulness for things unseen, unknowable. Absolute and terrifying and perfectly natural. Joined forever in that afterlife of memory.
Parted only, ever so slightly, by waking life.