Less than two weeks after our last emergency trip, we got the call again, and this time it was for real. A nurse who had worked for 20 years in hospice saw the signs of death in the breathing, and maybe in something else, but she knew – and it was so. So that is where we went, to a funeral for my wife’s mom. Unlike last time, death was not nearly as present as loss, a disbelief that someone who had been in our world for decades and a lifetime was now forever gone, elsewhere, to only God knows where. May you be blessed, Mary Ann.
Everything went as well as can be, but that did not matter to our dreams. Recently, my wife dreamed that her mother had been buried alive – horrible but impossible, as she had been embalmed. Why? As for myself, I had a dream of a different sort. It was no more wanted than Vicki’s but it insisted not only on being presented, but on staying in memory by a chance discussion.
I know for a fact that I am not the center of the world – centers of the world aren’t routinely ignored by the rest of the world – but I wonder about “chance.” It is my feeling that whatever made the universe could certainly make something important for me while making something else important for someone else at the same time, all as seamless as the cloak of night. In this case, chance involved a discussion about a dream by our host, an old friend of my wife who had insisted we stay with her during the ordeal of death and funeral and the sorting of property. Her dream had been a typical anxiety-at-work dream, something that was only of minor interest to me until it sparked the memory of my own dream the night before. It had been forgotten, and for good reason, but from then on, it was not to go away. No chance of that.
The dreamscape had been formed right there in the large, woodsy lot of our host in rural Mississippi. The trees had budded but not grown into leaf, just as in the waking world, and the sky was hung with clouds from the rains the night before. I could have been standing in the front yard fully awake, so identical it was to the woken world. Then came the substance, not in sight but in feel. Quickly but sublimely, I got a surge of what true hopelessness would be like. This was not the feeling that one might get at the wrong end of a firing squad or just before the blow of an avalanche. Those are one-time senses, or so I suppose, where life is about to end and there is nothing to be done about it. No, this was much worse. This was about an eternal hopelessness despite the surrounding scenery. This was about hopelessness both here and there, in a field of flowers or in a bed with the naked and the beautiful. It did not matter where one might be or what one might be doing. All about was hopelessness.
Can I describe it any better? Can anyone describe anything that is felt as total and eternal? Although no words came to me, I believe I figured out what this was: a glimpse of Hell. It did not need fire or demons or anything ugly – just the sense, the certainty, of eternal hopelessness. That was all it took to cause a remote sense of horror and doom.
It is my wish – my hope – that the remoteness of this horror meant that this was not a personal message, but rather a warning for us all to never let go of hope. From old it has been said that hope is one of the three things we are supposed to have for a good life, the other two being “faith” and “charity.” Oddly, it is hope that I always thought I had a lot of, with a lesser amount of faith and a miserly thimbleful of charity. But hope? Wasn’t I taught that we could do anything in America if we tried hard enough? Wasn’t the sky the limit, and then not even that, as Apollo 11 showed us?
Was it, then, a message of a political and cultural nature reflecting recent changes in America that some believe have bleached out all hope? There might be some truth to that, but there was much more depth to it. Yes, recent history has been discouraging – what era has not had its bad moments? - but this came at the time of the funeral of my mother-in-law, and also only two weeks before Easter. What is death by itself but the end of hope? And what is Easter but the supreme hope in death? Death in the raw is absolute to us, an undeniable end to the person we knew, while Easter, as we all know, denies this finality. In our current era, we hide death in institutions, but the dream world knows. The dream world can also be informed, so that it might relay to us that, even as death seems a dark end, we must still have hope; we must still have hope or else live in Hell.
Would this hell be forever? I don’t know. Could we die without hope and then remain in the realm of the dead without hope? Would we then live in the gray nether-world the Ancients envisioned, left to fade away into gloomy nothingness? So the Hebrews thought, until Resurrection came to the believers. To BELIEVERS. Certainly, faith is linked to hope, for who could have hope in a world built on death without faith? And let us not forget charity, for who would give up his wealth to strangers without a belief that something greater than us held us together in an embrace that at the very least hinted at universal love?
Faith, hope, and charity, the last two impossible without faith, and faith not demonstrable in this world without love. All are linked, one leading to the other, one dependent on the other. Without hope, life is an abyss of occasional pleasure and certain disappointment. With faith, we turn our gaze outwards from ourselves and downwards to those united to us in love, proof that the universe is not an ocean of unfeeling emptiness. We cannot truly live without hope, we cannot have hope without faith, and we cannot see faith without charity, without love. When we die, it might be that an invisible golden chain will be extended towards us, a chain whose links are made from faith and hope and love, and we might be called to grasp it - or not. It might be gold and eternal but it might also be easily missed, camouflaged by the limitations of the world. It might be that we first must have faith and hope before we can even find the chain that leads to perfect love.
Hope is not always easy. A death, a funeral, fear of the cold hand, fear of being buried alive. Horror. At such times hope is often lost. It is also at such times when hope must be found, for without it, the horror comes true. With hope comes something so much greater - but we first must believe to hope.
Oh Dream in Death, I hope the love they speak of at Easter will bring us this belief. Faith, hope, and charity: grant us this golden chain that takes from us the hopelessness that only our nightmares can truly understand.
Less than two weeks after our last emergency trip, we got the call again, and this time it was for real. A nurse who had worked for 20 years in hospice saw the signs of death in the breathing, and maybe in something else, but she knew – and it was so. So that is where we went, to a funeral for my wife’s mom. Unlike last time, death was not nearly as present as loss, a disbelief that someone who had been in our world for decades and a lifetime was now forever gone, elsewhere, to only God knows where. May you be blessed, Mary Ann.
Everything went as well as can be, but that did not matter to our dreams. Recently, my wife dreamed that her mother had been buried alive – horrible but impossible, as she had been embalmed. Why? As for myself, I had a dream of a different sort. It was no more wanted than Vicki’s but it insisted not only on being presented, but on staying in memory by a chance discussion.
I know for a fact that I am not the center of the world – centers of the world aren’t routinely ignored by the rest of the world – but I wonder about “chance.” It is my feeling that whatever made the universe could certainly make something important for me while making something else important for someone else at the same time, all as seamless as the cloak of night. In this case, chance involved a discussion about a dream by our host, an old friend of my wife who had insisted we stay with her during the ordeal of death and funeral and the sorting of property. Her dream had been a typical anxiety-at-work dream, something that was only of minor interest to me until it sparked the memory of my own dream the night before. It had been forgotten, and for good reason, but from then on, it was not to go away. No chance of that.
The dreamscape had been formed right there in the large, woodsy lot of our host in rural Mississippi. The trees had budded but not grown into leaf, just as in the waking world, and the sky was hung with clouds from the rains the night before. I could have been standing in the front yard fully awake, so identical it was to the woken world. Then came the substance, not in sight but in feel. Quickly but sublimely, I got a surge of what true hopelessness would be like. This was not the feeling that one might get at the wrong end of a firing squad or just before the blow of an avalanche. Those are one-time senses, or so I suppose, where life is about to end and there is nothing to be done about it. No, this was much worse. This was about an eternal hopelessness despite the surrounding scenery. This was about hopelessness both here and there, in a field of flowers or in a bed with the naked and the beautiful. It did not matter where one might be or what one might be doing. All about was hopelessness.
Can I describe it any better? Can anyone describe anything that is felt as total and eternal? Although no words came to me, I believe I figured out what this was: a glimpse of Hell. It did not need fire or demons or anything ugly – just the sense, the certainty, of eternal hopelessness. That was all it took to cause a remote sense of horror and doom.
It is my wish – my hope – that the remoteness of this horror meant that this was not a personal message, but rather a warning for us all to never let go of hope. From old it has been said that hope is one of the three things we are supposed to have for a good life, the other two being “faith” and “charity.” Oddly, it is hope that I always thought I had a lot of, with a lesser amount of faith and a miserly thimbleful of charity. But hope? Wasn’t I taught that we could do anything in America if we tried hard enough? Wasn’t the sky the limit, and then not even that, as Apollo 11 showed us?
Was it, then, a message of a political and cultural nature reflecting recent changes in America that some believe have bleached out all hope? There might be some truth to that, but there was much more depth to it. Yes, recent history has been discouraging – what era has not had its bad moments? - but this came at the time of the funeral of my mother-in-law, and also only two weeks before Easter. What is death by itself but the end of hope? And what is Easter but the supreme hope in death? Death in the raw is absolute to us, an undeniable end to the person we knew, while Easter, as we all know, denies this finality. In our current era, we hide death in institutions, but the dream world knows. The dream world can also be informed, so that it might relay to us that, even as death seems a dark end, we must still have hope; we must still have hope or else live in Hell.
Would this hell be forever? I don’t know. Could we die without hope and then remain in the realm of the dead without hope? Would we then live in the gray nether-world the Ancients envisioned, left to fade away into gloomy nothingness? So the Hebrews thought, until Resurrection came to the believers. To BELIEVERS. Certainly, faith is linked to hope, for who could have hope in a world built on death without faith? And let us not forget charity, for who would give up his wealth to strangers without a belief that something greater than us held us together in an embrace that at the very least hinted at universal love?
Faith, hope, and charity, the last two impossible without faith, and faith not demonstrable in this world without love. All are linked, one leading to the other, one dependent on the other. Without hope, life is an abyss of occasional pleasure and certain disappointment. With faith, we turn our gaze outwards from ourselves and downwards to those united to us in love, proof that the universe is not an ocean of unfeeling emptiness. We cannot truly live without hope, we cannot have hope without faith, and we cannot see faith without charity, without love. When we die, it might be that an invisible golden chain will be extended towards us, a chain whose links are made from faith and hope and love, and we might be called to grasp it - or not. It might be gold and eternal but it might also be easily missed, camouflaged by the limitations of the world. It might be that we first must have faith and hope before we can even find the chain that leads to perfect love.
Hope is not always easy. A death, a funeral, fear of the cold hand, fear of being buried alive. Horror. At such times hope is often lost. It is also at such times when hope must be found, for without it, the horror comes true. With hope comes something so much greater - but we first must believe to hope.
Oh Dream in Death, I hope the love they speak of at Easter will bring us this belief. Faith, hope, and charity: grant us this golden chain that takes from us the hopelessness that only our nightmares can truly understand.
RSS Feed