In Your Dreams

At night she dreams I’ll return. Like the hero of a great story, I’ll arrive just in time to hold her and protect her against the coming storm.

           I know these things now. These things which I could only imagine before. All parents worry for their children in some way. Only now I see inside her head. I see her dreams and her nightmares. She tosses around in terror in the night, and I wish I could do something more.

           When it’s really bad, I lean down and whisper in her ear. I say, “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m always here.” She calms down, and rests easier, but by morning the comfort is gone. She forgets, and it all starts again.

           I wish more than anything I could go back and do things differently. I wish I could have had the foresight to not go into that storm. I wish I had valued my own life as much as I had valued hers. Sometimes, before she sleeps, she gets angry. Harsh words fill her head and she gets sick from the pain. She wants to hit me. I want her to, too.

           I lean down and whisper in her ear. “I love you.” She never hears it, but I think she feels it. She feels it very much in her soul. Like the warmth that is internal on a cool autumn day. She feels the warmth of joy, just a moment.

           One day I was told it was time for me to go. I asked them why, and they told me she needed to move on, and that I needed to move on as well. I could not linger there.

           I said, “Can I just have one favor? Let me see her.”

           They told me I could. I could see her only once, but then it would be time to go. They left me, and on that night I went to her in a dream. She was standing alone in a field that had gone dark. I walked to her. She could not see me at first, but then the darkness faded to light, and she saw. Her smile was big. Her eyes were full of pure joy. I knelt down and hugged her. I kissed her.

           “Is it really you,” she asked.

           “Yes,” I said.

           I stroked her hair and held her in my arms.

           “Why did you go,” she asked.

           “I made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”

           “I don’t want you to leave me. I never wanted you to leave me.”

           “Darling, I never will. I’ll be here.”

           Time was passing quickly. I knew I would have to go soon. We separated and I told her, “I will always be with you. No matter what. I want you to live your life as best you can. I’ll be there for everything. Whenever you feel like you are alone, remember that I’m there. I’m always there.”

           The darkness was returning. The field was fading. I backed away slowly, and she looked like she was going to run me down.

           “Don’t go”, she cried. “Don’t leave me.”

           The darkness was closing in, and behind me opened the way back where I belonged. There wasn’t much time left. I looked to her one last time. She was only dreaming, but I was there. I was real. She would wake and remember everything. I hoped it was enough.

           One last time she cried, “Don’t go.”

           I said, “I love you.” All became black.

           Now I live in my own dreams. Things fade in and out. Memories come and go. All the time I think of home and of my daughter.

           Many years have passed, and the time has come to see her again. For her, all becomes dark, and I reach out and bring her in. We stand face to face. She is much older, but I still see the face of my little girl. All the years of grief have come to this.

           “You’re back,” she said. She smiles. I smile, too.

           “Did you really think I was gone?”

           “No,” she says.

           We stand together. The world around us has no structure. We exist only as pieces of a puzzle tossed up for the wind to carry us away.

           “It was awful without you,” she says.

           “You had a good life. You seemed happy.”

           “Yes. But I needed you.”

           “Now I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

           We walked around for a while. We relived some of our best memories. She showed me things that I had seen before. I was always watching. But I was happy to hear her speak. There came a moment of sadness.

           “I left everyone behind,” she said.

           “You didn’t make that choice. And they’ll see you again.”

           “I guess that’s the worst part. I have to deal with knowing they can’t see me. They can’t hear me. I worry about them.”

           I then told her about what I had done. She requested the same chance and so she went and lived for a moment in the dreams of her own family. When she came back, she was happier.

           “I think I did the right thing,” she said.

           “What did you say?”

           “I told them I was okay. I told them that I love them.”

           We walked on in the empty space we lived in. We lived again and again through our histories. As more and more joined us, we shared more and more of ourselves. We split apart and came back together. We told stories and made jokes. We lived as one consciousness. We were nothing but memories, and all we did was live in the past.

           Let’s go there, we would decide. How about here, we would ask. Further and further back into out own lives we went, and our existence was endless. We had become dreamers. All we dreamed had been real at one point or another.

           And sometimes, when I needed to be alone, I went back to the bedroom my daughter had lived in. It gave me comfort to see the old place. And there she would be sleeping. And softly into her ear I would say, “I’m here. I’m always here.”