Maybe

“Are you dreaming?” she asked.

“I can’t be,” I said. “I’m sure of it. We’ve spent the whole day together. Haven’t we?”

We hadn’t. That would be impossible. Only possible in a dream. My dreams are cruel. In them, I am always the last to know I’m dreaming. I stupidly accept the pleasant impossibilities before me only to bump into reality. I never learn. I jumped on the lucid dreaming wagon years ago and fell off after so many months. My journal entries to induce the lucidity devolved into a collection of memories I’ve never had and words I never said.

Some think dreams are the real world. I never bought that. The real is far too real to be a trick. As for dreams being doorways or channels to communicate, I’m not sure. It’s common for the dead to appear in our dreams. I’m the perfect example of that. If they are real, the dead that is, it seems most plausible that they would come to us in dreams. If there is an afterlife, it must be some sort of form of unconscious. Connected to the collective of the life force or something like that. It begs the question: what are the dead?

When I see her in my dreams, and if she is quote unquote real, is it her or everything of her there was up until the moment she was no more? It is a strange thought. I often ponder the complexities, parameters, and limitations that the dead would have since it does seem there are rules or boundaries enforced upon them by something or someone. However, this odd thought was inspired by her on a night we sat on her porch and watched the sky.

“You know what’s so strange,” she said. “The stars we see, a lot of them, they aren’t there anymore. They’ve died. It’s just their light we see still traveling toward us. Like a memory.”

Maybe the dead exist only as far they lived. Somewhere far away, she exists but nothing new can come from her. If that is the case, it’s both comforting and sad.

I read somewhere once about the concept of solipsism. The short of it is, only your mind exists. Everyone else and all the stuff around you is you. I don’t really buy that either. However, maybe that is what the afterlife is? Maybe we don’t end but our ability to be together or communicate ends. Maybe we create a world for ourselves in our afterlife that is contained. We’re all somewhere, but in our own boats. Would we know? Know that the people or places that fill our afterlife are merely avatars of our own creation? I wouldn’t be able to get past that.

“Are you dreaming” is always how the dream ends. Why does she have to ask? Why am I pushed out of something she and I would want to savor? I wonder, if the dead are simply ghosts or spirits, do they know? Maybe the dead can’t remember anything before they died like we can’t remember anything before we were born. Maybe to her I’m dead and the dream is us reconnecting but she realizes the impossibility of it as well. That would make sense.

A friend of mine, who is a little out there, told me about this quantum entanglement idea. Well, it’s more than idea, I suppose. But, it’s two subatomic particles that are somehow linked. They can be linked despite being light years away from each other. They both react at the same time to stimuli or being observed. Maybe souls can do that too. Something makes them link. Dreams might be the moments our souls vibrate and harmonize.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

“I am now,” I said. “What time is it?”

“It’s time for you to dream.”

And then I woke up. She changed it up that time.

All of these thoughts I keep to myself. They’re not appropriate to discuss during the humdrum reruns of everyday life full of coworkers and that friend you keep trying to meet for dinner but something always comes up. Coffee creamers made from some sort of nut, shows (or series as you’re supposed to call them now), restaurants, those are the topics of the living.

“When I die,” she said. “How long will you wait until you date?”

“I’m not even thinking of that,” I said. The stars weren’t visible through the hospital room window. Nothing was. Only a blackness that reflected the reality of that room.

“But how long?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I want to know how long I should haunt you.”

All of the years between the present and that moment fall away easily for me. The memory is so clear. She had no idea how long she would haunt me. Maybe she does now, though. Maybe she’d go away if I started dating?

People are funny. Myself included. We think about death so much or worry about it. We’ve all faced the horrible notion that when you die, you end, the lights go out, show’s over, and then nothingness. But you can’t talk about it. And you shouldn’t. It’s off putting. You can talk about all the medications that keep you from dying. Nothing wrong there.

Life is good at distracting us from death too. There’s every worry in the world up for grabs to keep you busy until your heart stops. I do stay busy but when alone at night, I find myself looking up at the sky thinking of all those lights that may or may not be there. The mind tends to wander at times like that. It keeps me up a lot of nights.

When we dream, it’s supposedly the brain’s way of rebooting so that we don’t go crazy or die of exhaustion. I don’t think we’ll ever truly figure it out. It’s strange that you don’t remember most dreams at all. What if the dreams we can’t recall are the best ones of all? Maybe it’s too much for us. Maybe you couldn’t accept reality again after a real knockout of a dream. Maybe the dead whisper something to us in those that is too revealing.

“This is odd,” I said, gazing up at the impossible colors of the galaxies and nebulae that streamed across the sky.

“Too far fetched?” she asked. “It sure is pretty, though.”

“No. It’s odd that you haven’t asked me if I’m dreaming yet.”

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.