Dreams Between Us: Elegy for My Father

Rather than learning from our parents and ancestors how to live into
death, and even beyond it in a spiritual sense, we attempt to create away
from death, and thereby away from life as well.
Greg Mogenson,
Greeting the Angels
Having passed through dreams and nightmares bringing me images of cousins
who died or were wounded in Vietnam; having navigated riddles from a well-read,
unschooled grandfather returned to dreams to illuminate choosing as an action would
have to learn if was going to attend graduate school and have a career as a teacher;
and having learned that dead friends and relatives would !ump into my dreams for more
than their own ends, am convinced that dreaming is my way of grieving. "nd than#
$ersephone % goddess of lost souls % for this guidance. &hese elegiac dreams provide
me with a psychologically imaginative means for resolving grief; for internali'ing da(s
irreplaceable senses of humor and family; for engaging the spirit of )dna so that we
remember old tales that can tell as new human stories; for animating in me the
particular strengths of individuals have loved % strengths have needed to carry on, to
develop in navigating my own healthy human development. Most of all, these inhabiting
souls guide me in understanding a concept Greg Mogenson articulates in this way* +,e
help the dead to inhabit death; they help us to inhabit life. ,e are as much their angels
as they are ours.+
Elegy
-learing my head from a !arring wa#e up, sat in the middle of the couch, pulling
the worn-almost-too-thin cornflower embossed comforter from !unior high years to my
chin as if the night were a mid-winter with ./-below pre-dawn wind chills rather than a
late summer 0 a.m. holding still hot air to the ground at the end of a fiery wee#; inside,
air conditioning iced the air and sealed out sounds from a world not focused on my
father(s dying. 1omething was amiss and was blin#ing my eyes clear enough to focus
toward my father(s new room in the house.
&wo wee#ends before had helped hospice wor#ers turn my old playroom into
the place where my father would % to say it as bluntly as we #new it % die. &his
wee#end slept on the living room couch a do'en steps away from the o2ygen
machine(s whoosh-whir, whoosh-whir, whoosh-whoosh cadence pushing manufactured
air into the poc#ets of my father(s cancer congested lungs. " do'en steps from the
couch to the playroom. 3or me, an hourly cycle of 45 minutes sleeping, then 65
minutes at $ops( bedside whispering stories, offering water or medications, staunching
sweat with soft cotton rags and ice water. My mother slept upstairs, the hospice-loaned
intercom turned low but connecting her to any urgent tone in my father(s voice during
the night. made these nighttime tre#s toward the solitary light in the house so that my
mother could have rest at night, and to ease my father(s after-midnight restlessness by
maintaining a pattern of human presence and interaction that lin#ed evening to morning,
erasing night.
" dream. &his sleep pattern had not erased dreams. 7es, that is what had !arred
me from sleep. 8nly fifteen minutes since (d been in $ops( room, glancing from the
couch to the cloc#; in that instant saw my mother wal#ing from the hospice playroom*
+9ad o#ay:+ the only calm ;uestion could as#.
+1eems your dad had a bad dream. He was pounding on the front door at your
"unt Helen and <ncle Herman(s house (up on the hill,( he said, trying to get them to (let
me in( during a drowning rain storm=.+
+=.and they wouldn(t,+ began, +because it wasn(t (your time( yet.+
+7es,+ she faltered, +that was the end of his dream.+
+>o=that wasn(t the end of the dream,+ pic#ed up. +&he dream ended with
$ops as#ing me why Helen and Herman wouldn(t let him into their house, why he was
(still here drowning.( stammered something about there being things for him to do here
before that door would open, that Gram and weren(t ready to let him go yet. t was my
dream, too.+ $ops? dream had merged with mine, at least one of us !oined by Gram*
confluent dreaming % !oining, mingling, meeting together, coalescing. 9reams with
Hannah, the mother and grandmother, between us.
My grandmother had died bitterly !ust ten years before, reproaching her
careta#ers, both people whom she had reared and loved, for leaving her to die in a slim
hospital bed with no history of bearing the bones and luminous flesh of her people. "nd
us: My father, great uncle 9ave, and % the family members who had been #ept away
when the eldest removed her from the homeplace and refused to inform us that these
were Gram(s final days: ,hat had she made of our absence: >o voice would tell us
now what she had wished for us % thought of us % in that anguished anger. >o words
we could spea# to one another would soften all that we were forced to read in her
corpse, that immobili'ed flesh fatigued by acrimony, abraded from anger. had no
dreams at her dying or !ust after her death; instead, for several years nightmarish
confusions of bold colors, familiar photographs and solitary, random words moved along
a loop behind my eyes.
Gram became a dream image, first, finally, as my father was about to receive a
#idney transplant, nearly five years after her death. n this dream, found perhaps the
clearest picture ever made of my grandmother % the voice e2actly right, the house dress
truly pin# and the cotton hose rolled !ust to the top of her shins, the e2cess twisted into a
small #not at the outside of each #nee. 1itting at the #itchen table, loo#ing at me and
the bird feeder outside the south-facing window, Gram sipped from an ivory-colored cup
of strong blac# coffee. ,ith the window behind my left shoulder, spun my cup in
circles on the formica table, glancing at Gram over the tops of my glasses. "t once, she
rose, stepped to the sin#, rinsed then placed her cup on the drain board; after a
moment(s pause, she turned to touch my shoulder and said, +(m ready to let you go
now.+ &hen she e2ited the bac# screen door and wal#ed into her garden. &o let me go.
Her transitional soul no longer re;uiring me as an earthly intercessionary to wrestle with
family rights and wrongs.
"s well as $ops #new my dream history, he #new better the history of grieving we
shared. 9uring the wee# after his +terminal+ diagnosis, as part of one afternoon of
tal#ing fran#ly, we spo#e about Gram(s life and her dying, then turned to funerals* a
morbid counting of 4. wa#es, funerals or burials for friends or family during my life, one
for each year % with soon one to grow on, a macabre teasing, as would enter my 44
th

year !ust after my father(s there-is-no-denying-it-is-immanent death; and a blunt
renewing of promises (d made at the time $ops entered Mayo Hospital for #idney
transplant surgery % at his death there would be no viewing of +the body,+ there would
be cremation rather than burial, the funeral words and music would be more +,ipe 8ut+
than +How Great &hou "rt,+ and he would not % as his parents had % die in a hospital or
alone or angry.
@eft alone on the couch when mom returned to her room, reached a hand
underneath to find my glasses and soc#s before shuffling the twelve steps to my father.
@eaning against the boo#shelves we built together, studied his face and his hands; the
long fingers holding a sheet and blan#et up to his chin, the thic# waves of hair smoothed
bac# from his brow % this still life revealing his parents( bones* his mother(s elegant
hands and chee#s, his father(s sculpted nose and brow. leaned toward the light above
his head and watched the face, the hands, the twitch of his feet escaping % as always %
from under the covers; watched his breathing change with the dawn, time again for
palliatives, morphine tablets under the tongue and water daubed on the brow and
dropped from a straw anchored in always melting ice chips. 8n this 1unday morning
that we(d been sent into after dreams, remembered the chosen silent moments at my
grandparents( house % those wonderful interludes when 1taffordA"le2ander fol#s would
sit with one another and their ideas. " silent communion, eyes ta#ing in seasonal
colors, movement of birds and s;uirrels, motions and sight lines of the other
communicants. (d learned there to have and shape my own thoughts, learned that
was responsible for coming up with ideas and for owning up to them, learned to watch
for moments when ideas settled behind another person(s eyes. understood that in a
lifetime with my father, had been taught to be comfortable in the presence of thin#ing.
8n this 1unday morning, watched my father(s eyes open, focus on my face,
wander boo# bindings and bright pictures and garden flowers erasing decades of
homewor# angst. &hese pools of unfocused green settled on my face and into
understanding he had lived another day. $ulling a focus again, moments later he turned
to as# for what was needed* ice chips, my hand taming his wavy hair gone wild, and
silence. "cross two days, there would be no spectacular final words between father and
daughter. nstead, there would be water even when none could be swallowed, iced
cloths that fever burned through, o2ygen tubes ad!usted even as there were fewer
poc#ets to ventilate, and last doses of morphine erasing night, day, pain, words. &here
would be silence. Mine humble. His trusting.
stretched across the couch, loosening the cornflower comforter. t was B a.m.
and $ops( coma had let me gather sleep in two-hour doses, for changes came more
slowly now. t was Gram who had awa#ened me this &uesday morning. @eaning over
me, her hand smoothing my brow, she said, +Get out of bed now and tell your father it(s
time to come home.+ 7es, ma(am. "nd so it was time. " last time that would be in
silence with one of "le2anders who raised me. "nd watch the wor# of my hands %
cleaning rotted phlegm and slaver from $ops( face, massaging his fingers from tensed
grip to supple rest, loving that fevered brow with firm caresses. 8nly then, could brea#
our silence in the few words could shaped as assurances to loop behind his ear*
+Gram sent me to tell you now it is time now to come home. 1he(s here to be with you
while go to get Mom.+
Moving in sync with the o2ygen machine, wal#ed from my father(s hospice room
to rouse my mother as gently as could* +Mom,+ stood in her doorway, +it(s almost
time.+ 3or three hours we stayed close by as $ops died at home with as much ease as
the circumstances could muster* wife and daughter #eeping earthly promises, father
and mother each momentarily rooted to earth to help this son create his ways to death.
"s $ops released a final breath, three "le2ander souls hovered in the room* mother,
father and son, dreams now becoming the span between them and me.
Grace
&he people love in this life and beyond entice % no, dare % me to waft along this
e2traordinarily embodied bridge, inviting me sometime on a night(s travel to awa#en %
again, anew % to wander a bit with them, to stir up understandings for this life. &hus
enriched, rise on richly ;uiet mornings to savor that delightful mClange of love and ris#,
bitter and sweet, purpose and drift that comes from my bones.