In my dream, he was lounging in a pickup truck (it wasn't actually him, but the person in the pickup truck morphed into him at some point; you know how dreams go) in one part of my dream. And then I walked around a pool, surrounded by family and friends (think Troop Beverly Hills (If you've seen it, you know what I mean)) and was horrified to see a body floating facedown in it, legs well below the surface, clearly dead. He was dressed in a white tank top and gray lounging pants, the way I remember him best, and he was being held up by his good friend, who was dressed in a black T-shirt.
I screamed, "Who is it?" and it seemed that everyone else already knew. It was the friend who finally said, "It's Alex," and though I knew it would be, I felt my heart sink into my stomach and woke up sobbing with the same deep, heavy feeling I had almost ten years ago when I had actually discovered his body.
I sobbed my way toward the bathroom, and because it was just a few minutes before my alarm clock, I continued my sobbing through my morning routine. Through brushing my teeth, putting dinner in the crockpot (maybe that's why I forgot the lid and it ended up looking like some half-raw monster), and getting dressed. I sobbed so much that even 15 minutes later, when I had finally calmed down, my husband got one quick look at me and said, "wow, you cried a lot." (but at least he had the grace not to use his favorite term: "ugly crying")
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| My uncovered crockpot dinner. I'm convinced it could have been fantastic... |
By now, you've realized that this post isn't for you, dear reader. This post is for me, and I wrote it because I spent all day yesterday thinking about my brother. Not his laughing face or his sense of humor, but his lifeless body.
Truly, this post isn't for him, either. When I think of my brother, I remember him sitting on the front porch with an entire summer's day in front of him; I remember him pretending a hose was his penis while he sprayed me with his "pee"; I remember him actually throwing a urine-filled balloon at me, which was hysterical, albeit traumatic. I remember the bad, too: the tequila night, when he was so drunk he almost broke my arm; the years we used a club lock on our cars so he wouldn't steal them; the day he pawned my (father's) laptop with the first novel I had ever written on it.
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| Alex and my sister, Lauren, with her new car. Sadly, the Alero is no longer with us, either. |
But, this dream was not about any of that. This dream was about me and my feelings. The reason I was even more upset to find that the dead person in the pool was Alex was because in a moment when I feared the worst could happen, I realized it already had. Perhaps this is most true for those who have sustained traumatic loss, but when I imagine a worst-case scenario, I'm extra leery because I know how easily it can become a reality. And, as I learned last night, I know that it never really goes away.
In the end, there's value in having these memories, no matter how painful, pop up. They make you stop, analyze, remember. They make us remember that with pain, there is healing. They put us on guard for what could happen and, if we're looking at them as an opportunity rather than a burden, appreciate the value of what we have a little more.
This is not what you would call a "happy" post, but I did warn you...
"Keep some sorrow in your hearts and minds,
for the things that die before their time."
-Counting Crows
