For my dream writing class, I've been having to pay close attention to my dreams and record them when I wake up. This proves to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be, and I often wake in the middle of the night, knowing that I've been dreaming hard about something but with the conscious awareness that the images of the dream are slipping through my fingers like wisps of cottony cloud. It's made me realize how much I dream...how many dreams I have every single night, and how hard it is to make myself wake up and record them at 3 a.m. when I just want to roll over and go back to sleep.
We've been encouraged to take 'elaborate naps' which I am quite delighted by, and so I came straight home from work today and took a nice long one. I dreamed that I was at Tom's family reunion this coming summer, at his aunt and uncle's house just north of Bellingham (where the reunions are usually held). Except this house was not actually their house. It was more of just a big wooden deck, one that reminded me of the deck at Libby's boyfriend Mike's family cabin on Hood Canal. The deck was in the middle of a big green lawn, and faced out toward the ocean. I had an acute feeling that I was in South Carolina, where Tom's dad lives now, and I was standing on the deck looking out at the ocean (that looked more like Hood Canal than the ocean). I was talking with some relatives that I don't actually know, but who seemed to make sense and look familiar in the dream. I was telling them how I had been to lots of family events before, and that in fact I'd been at the last family reunion just two years ago that had happened in the same place. The sun was starting to fall lower in the sky, and I was having a progressively harder time turning my head to actually see all of the relatives around me.
Then, Tom's uncle Guy, who passed away shortly after the reunion two years ago, showed up wearing a dusty-rose colored pair of bermuda shorts. He was younger than he'd ever been when I actually knew him, and his outfit was kind of reminiscent of a picture that I've seen of Tom's mom Gay in the 80s. At the last family reunion, Guy had been really sick, suffering from diabetes that he didn't like to take care of. He was weeks away from having a surgery that was hopefully going to reverse his condition, and on the last day of the reunion the family had a testimony meeting where they blessed Guy and prayed for a successful surgery. A testimony meeting, if you don't know, is where everyone in the family sits down and hears each other's testimony that God is real. Tom's family is Mormon, and these kind of things are pretty alien to me, but it was intense and I found it moving all the same. Guy and Gay are two of a large group of siblings (eight? eleven? ...I can't remember, but it's always a big crowd at family events) who had lost their dad when they were very young, and had been raised by a single mom. A lot of their testimonials centered around this fact of death; that their loved ones had somehow communicated to them from the other side, and through this they knew that God was real. Aunt Marsha told everyone how once, shortly after their dad had passed away, she had been riding her bike when a driver swerved up onto the sidewalk and should have hit her. Miraculously she found herself five feet away from where she had been on the bike, shocked, but sure that her father had protected her. She said that in that moment, the air felt a certain way, and that the leaves moved against each other to make a sound that she knew was him, unmistakably. Everyone in the room was very emotional, even me, and when it was all over, and Guy had been blessed by all the priesthood holders of the family, he took me aside and thanked me for sitting through it. He said he knew it was probably really weird to listen to all that, which it was (and wasn't, at the same time), and then he hugged me, and told me he was glad I was part of the family.
Guy was Tom's favorite Uncle ( actually, I think he was everyone's favorite uncle). He loved cars and building things and bad jokes and junk food. He let us drive his $100,000 Jaguar even though we'd had our licenses less than a year, and liked to break rules in the best kind of way. He was one of those people who makes fun of you until there isn't room to be uncomfortable with yourself anymore, and then makes fun of himself just to make you feel better. At his funeral and in the weeks after, I thought again and again of his blessing at the family reunion and his kind words to me. I'm not sure that I felt it was "divine" or anything, but I surely found it poignant that I got to have such a sweet last conversation with him.
Now years have passed, and unfortunately I probably spend more time thinking about organic knitted baby rattles and facebook statuses that the tiny, most important moments in my life. And maybe that's why today, when Guy showed up in my head, healthy and wearing pink bermuda shorts, my dream focused on him. As I watched him pass out deep-fried corn dogs from a Costco sized cardboard box (calling them "appetizers"), I wondered if what I was seeing was more than just a dream. If heaven is real, as most of us hope it is, then surely this would be Guy's version, as I can't imagine anything that would make him more delighted than sharing a box of deep-fried corn dogs with his giant, loving family. And I guess if God is willing to grant us lush green lawns and our favorite, greasy indulgences in the after-life, then perhaps we shouldn't fear death so much, or grieve so terribly when people go.
I guess a big wooden deck somewhere in the sky is something I can believe in.
I'm the passenger in a car headed to a family reunion. We drive to my neighborhood, but the streets look unfamiliar even though I know I'm in the right place. We parallel park the car (not very well) in a hurry and walk to the house where the reunion is being held.There are dead leaves all over the ground and it feels like Fall. From the outside, the big old house isn't one I recognize at all, but once I'm inside I know it is the house of a childhood friend. Though I am entirely positive this is my family reunion,no one from my family is actually there, and the people I came with aren't my family members either.
