2020-03-16-1832 To Mike (how much more can you live?)

Dream dreams and sing songs
what a wonderful thing
I think of you daily
my own, my own
All life is a treasure
I hold most precious
Ain’t nobody more
beloved than thou
— poem song made for Mike while he was alive

Yesterday I dreamt about you again. This time we got to spend 3 days together before you died. Three extra days where somehow the claws of fate were delayed by the sole strength of your intention. As before, I played the anxious Cassandra, you the concerned receiver of ill news. Much of these days were spent busily seeking solutions – trying to obtain a brain scan. The rest of the days were spent together, in the daily rhythms of life – cooking, eating, cleaning, taking the kids out.

It never fails to startle me that, regardless of intent, there is only so much one can squeeze into a life, into an interaction. How much more tightly can you hold a person without eventually letting go? How much time can you spend in endless conversation without there needing to be respite? How deeply can we experience love, convey love, inform the other of their status as cared, valued, – before the intensity is more than a person can effectively receive in a moment? You can live life with greater intention and presence, but you can never go beyond the threshold of what can be effectively sensed [1].

So our three days went by (pretty much) like every other day. With touch, conversation, exchanges of affection, and shared work on our most precious projects – our children. And now these too, despite being in the dream world, are in the past.

I do not believe in life after death. So I do not imagine your spectre stalking our home, your ghost along the corridors of your work, your spirit bemusedly drifting along the hallways of the ICU or inhabiting the container where your ashes now dwell. No, I do not think it feasible. Sometimes, when I am feeling especially weak, I imagine you spooning me. I imagine you putting your arms around me. I imagine because I know that is what you would do in life. What you would do if you could.

And as these are true things they are allowed in my fantasy as a representative facimile of your actions in moments of turmoil. On this at least I can time travel into the present, a present inferred from the past. Where for that one quirk of fate, I allow myself to dwell – for a very brief moment – in that preferred alternate universe.

 

---

[1]:  of course there is individual variation to this. One of the most interesting analogies comes from a person I read online once who was talking about giftedness. He referred to giftedness as “living life in higher resolution” ↩︎

2020-02-17-0822 To Mike (the stars)

The sun is coming out earlier now, around 7.30 the sky is bright. I wish you were here to see it. I have had several pleasant sensations since you passed away – the sashimi where I tagged along with Caleb to get away – but realized it was because I didn’t want to be left alone. The flowers in the house… I had thought cut flowers are such a frivolous thing, but somehow they do give some comfort, perhaps in particular as the trees are still bare outside. I guess I just needed to be empty enough to feel the comfort they give.

I wish you were here to share these sensations with me. Yet we have, indeed, shared as many moments as we could. Nice sashimi, for example. One time we were fighting on that beach resort vacation, because we somehow expected that no one was taking care of the kids. I was feeling quite upset and couldn’t sleep, and went out of the cabin all in disturbance. But then I saw the sky… and I went back in, and said to you “Come outside! The sky is amazing.” And you immediately came with me, and we stood there for a while staring at this night sky full of stars, holding hands. When we went back into the cabin again soon later (for these are one of those moments where the flavor is often chosen to be savored shorter, rather than prolonged for very long), we were once again at charity with each other.