Dream A Little Dream

I stood at the edge of the airport’s pick-up lane, toes hanging off the curb while cars crept by with giddy passengers and excited expressions. This was not my first time visiting upstate New York in the heat of July under the pretense of death. The first time I was only eight years old, but today, as I waited for my great Uncle Nick, my body had reached the age of thirty. No longer a chubby child unaware of the finality of death, I was now a married woman with a successful career living a relatively idyllic life in the Pacific Northwest. I had forgotten what July felt like in other areas of the country – thick, damp, and damn near unbearable.

The seconds felt like hours in the heat, beads of sweat gathering along my hairline and under my nose as the memories of the last twenty-four hours flashed through my mind. It was a phone call that we all know we’ll receive one day yet are never prepared for. For years, when people asked about my family “back home” I would describe my fortune at having reached adulthood with four living grandparents. Soon, that number would be three, if I had indeed arrived in time and the count had not already been reset.

It wasn’t long before a white Ford Escort slithered its way through the three lanes of one-way traffic and came to a stop in front of me. Uncle Nick, now in his late sixties, was out in a flash and rushing over to me. This side of my family was mostly estranged from their southern-bred counterparts, my mother having left the family to start her new life with my father in the armpit of Florida. But my great uncle, more like an older brother to my mother, was an exception, as were my grandparents, for the most part. Italians take family seriously and leaving the family was a stain passed on to my siblings and me – we were outsiders that happened to carry some of the family blood. They teased us for our accents and saying “ya’ll”, even though my speech dictated neither such thing. Truthfully, aside from my grandparents, Uncle Nick was the only one who ever made me feel like family when I did make an occasional visit.

He swept me up into a hug, his bald head resting against my temple and his full belly pushing against me. I was sure his tardiness would be due to a box of a dozen jelly-filled, powdered donuts in his backseat. He always remembered my favorite treats.

“Have you talked to your mom?” he asked me, still holding his grip.

“Not since before I left SeaTac,” I told him, gently stepping out of his hold. “Has there been any change?”

“Not really. Cece told me he managed to eat a few cavatelli and sip some chicken broth, but he’s mostly sleeping now.”

“I made it in time, then,” I said with relief.

The call had come in barely twenty-four hours prior. Grandpa’s port for dialysis had failed, again, and he refused a new one. Without a port, he would not receive dialysis, the toxins in his blood would build, and he would die. They said it could be as soon as twenty-four hours, or as many as seventy-two. I had cried most of the flight from Chicago to Rochester, afraid my goodbye would fall on deaf ears, but now a new fear was creeping over my skin, cooling away the sheen of sweat. Now I would watch as my grandfather, the strong and intimidating Italian patriarch, was preyed upon by Death, becoming frail and swollen; I would watch the light of his being diminish into nothing. I would see what could never be unseen.

Uncle Nick opened the back passenger door and tossed my small bag, packed for only a few days and a funeral, into the backseat next to the shallow white box I had expected. I stepped down from the curb into the compact car and we were off to Barker Street.

As we pulled into the freshly asphalted driveway, the pitch black contrasting the bright white paint of the 1940s-built home, my anxiety started to spike at what was next, the reality I would face versus my inexperienced expectations. I jumped out of the car as soon as Nick put the gear into Park and ran to the side entrance of the sunroom, yanking open the door, and making my way into the kitchen. Cece, my grandmother, sat at the round table in the middle of her kitchen with a small cup of coffee in her hands while my mother, Camilla, stood at the sink looking into the backyard while eating a peach off the tree Grandpa had planted the summer they moved into the house. The sight of the two women, soothing themselves during this vigil, moved me to tears. I went to my grandmother and embraced her with one arm while reaching a hand behind me to wrap it around my mother’s waist. I had not lost a husband or a father and I was unsure which of them felt the deepest sorrow, whom to embrace first.

My grandmother softly shook under my arm, setting her coffee onto its matching saucer delicately painted with purple violets.

“Is he sleeping?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s been asleep for a few hours but is getting a little restless,” my mother answered. “David,” my cousin, “was here a few minutes ago, but he had to go back to work.”

In other words, he was alone for now.

“I’m going to go sit with him, if that’s okay,” I said, hoping to have a few one-on-one moments with the man I both loved and despised, fiercely at times. Louis could be a hard man to love. He could be domineering and was often narcissistic, but the same strength with which he tried to control others, he also used to love them.

My grandmother nodded silently at my request and I stood from my crouch, turning toward the doorway leading to the living room. Uncle Nick had told me during the drive that the hospice bed couldn’t fit in the quaint master bedroom without removing the other bed, so Louis opted to greet death in his living room. I found that amusing as I had never seen him spend any length of time in that room. I wished they could have placed it, instead, in his garden, amongst his tomatoes and green beans, where he spent most of his time in the spring and summer months.

The sight of him in the living room was simultaneously less horrific and more sorrowful than I had envisioned. There were no monitors or tubes, no breathing machines or smells of disinfectant. Only a small, elderly man with a swollen abdomen asleep in a metal bed draped with three crocheted blankets. One of the yellow and green striped dining room chairs was set beside him for visitors to sit closely, intimately, with him. In that moment, I felt a peace amidst my sadness. This is how Louis wanted the end: in his home, with his family and few friends, with no interference of modern medicine between him and his Maker. I could see the beauty of his decision, the courage of deciding he was ready. The only sorrow in this room was mine – Louis was only at peace.

While the time was still mine alone with him, I stepped quietly to the chair and settled myself into the seat with a deep, cleansing breath. Suddenly, I remembered the time, I was near the age of twelve, when I stood on the couch in our living room and sang a song on the radio to him, expecting him to tell me to “quiet down”; he hated modern music and only listened to Italian romance singers and Ella Fitzgerald. Instead, to my utter surprise, he smiled widely at me and asked, “Where did you learn to sing like that?” He was the first adult in my life to compliment me on a talent that was solely my own, no one had taught me or encouraged me to sing, I just did, and I did it well. He was the first adult to see me.

With the room still, his breath coming in long wheezes, I took his hand into mine and began to sing to him quietly:

“Stars shining bright above you

Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you

Birds singing in the sycamore tree

Dream a little dream of me.

Say nighty-night and kiss me

Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me

While I’m alone and blue as can be

Dream a little dream of me.”

His eyes fluttered but never opened while the sides of his mouth twitched upward. I finished Ella and Louis’ duet with:

“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Keep dreaming, leave the worries behind you

But in your dreams, whatever may be

You’ve gotta make me a promise, promise to me

You’ll dream, dream a little dream of me.”

I stood from my seat, wanting him to rest without more interruption, leaned over and whispered, “I’ll dream little dreams of you, too, Grandpa,” then gently kissed his left cheek, then his right, before a last and final kiss on his forehead.

My dreams of my grandfather are not in my sleep, they are in my voice when I sing, and when I prune my tomato plants. He is present in my waking dreams while I tend my flowers and chase squirrels from my fruit trees. He is my fierceness in both loving and loathing. He is my guide in who to be and not to be. He is my blood, my lifeline, my family.