Nightmares and Heaven

Above is a picture of my older son in the setting of many of his childhood nightmares. We happened to visit a church that housed the school he went to preschool in and we snuck around into that hallway so that he could confront it. He was kind of astonished by how big he felt, how he had outgrown the nightmare. Some nightmares can be outgrown, others stay with us until they become reality, the nightmare serving as a reminder that the inevitable will come. One such nightmare for me is the death of my mother.
I think tonight’s nightmare was brought to me by (broadcaster voice) a poem shared with me this afternoon and my close friend’s mother being diagnosed with cancer. The poem, Heaven, or Whatever by Shane Koyczan made me cry during a writing group. In public. In front of other people. Understand this before you click it. But be brave and click it anyway.

When I woke, I sent my friend an email:

Thinking about you and how terrified you must be. I haven’t got any be strong, don’t worry, or this is how you navigate this things to say to you. I don’t know what words navigate something as slippery and scary as holding a lightning rod. I know you, and I know you will do it with grace.

And I suggest this: write her letters. Know what you need to say and say it, if even to yourself, and then act on it in your interactions with her. Regret is unfortunately the only thing that remains. I hate to say things like this to you, to ask you to breathe into the very places that hurt. But I wish someone had told me that.

Then I called my mother, halfway around the world, 3 am here being 3 pm there, and could barely get words out.

So I sent my mother this email:
In my dream I had one last day with you. And only kind of knew it. And we went on a drive in a sort of car, stopping everywhere that was strange but in the dream somewhat familiar and a part of your life. And I kept getting nervous-angry–when I got lost, when I didn’t have the correct change for toll, when the roads were narrow and suspended in the air like hammocks. And you were calm, and patient and joking (which sometimes made me more angry, as it does). But toward the end I realized that I would have to do all of it by myself from now on. And just before waking I turned to you and said, “Amma I’m so scared all the time. How will I do this by myself?”

And it’s true. I’m so scared all the time. I guess we all are, aren’t we?

So your prompt is to listen to that poem, bawl your eyes out, and then pull your shit together and love the people you love with the kind of fierceness you won’t regret. I’m always taking poems via email. Always loving you.