Dreams

     There are dreams now, bright flashes coming forth from the still black fog.  For a long time, sleep has been a tiny taste of death.  No sight, no sound or smell or flavor, no thought.  Only timeless black.  Peaceful, maybe, if it weren't just a void.

    I used to hate it.  I used to fight against it.  And then slowly I began to get angry at the chiming of the bells needed to rouse me.  I began to get jealous of the old man in the tale who slept a hundred years.  And then I was jealous of those who never rose.

       

    The older I get, the more being awake means being in pain.  I fear the movement that comes with the waking world, never knowing whether the next step will cause the inevitable agony that has burdened me before.  I shuffle my feet like an elderly woman now, doubting my face will ever possess the age.  Not as badly as I hurt now.  No.  Life has not been kind to me, and I think it grows more weary of me with each passing day.  I could feel its disdain shrouding me, slapping my face in a hundred different ways, all for some sin I don't recall accomplishing.  

    I tried to remember what I had done to deserve this punishment.  I thought about it for so long, but the answer never came. And when I was certain I was innocent, that I had never committed some heinous act to make me deserve the cruelty of life...that was the first night I stopped fighting the tiny death of slumber.  And after a time, enemies became lovers.

    That's when the dreams began.

    

    At first, they were only still moments.  Separate images slowly passing through, infrequent and jarring.  Then, they began to move, short scenes playing out in my unsure mind.  I walked through a house looking for salt.  A sword flashed in my hand as I swung it in battle.  A young man gave me my first kiss, allowing me to learn what to do with my lips and tongue.  I could trust him.  I could taste him.  I loved him.

    The dreams grew longer, more vibrant.  I've lived lives that are not my own.  Whole lives.  Lives where I was cherished and unafraid.  I've held hands with the other half of my soul sitting in a chair on the porch, an old woman with her old man, watching the sun set.  I've slipped past the enemies defenses, sacrificing my life to end a bloody war.  I've been a child who refused to listen to the warnings and followed the creature into the water and had it drag me under the surface, a lesson learned too late.

    He told me once, a long time ago, that he believed in non-linear reincarnation.  That time is a man-made construct and if reincarnation was real, our souls wouldn't be bound by such useless rules.  The next life could be a million years in the future, or a hundred years in the past, or even repeating the same life again but with different choices and different outcomes.

    Sometimes I wonder if he's the one giving me these dreams.  If he's giving me these glimpses into other lives to remind me to have hope and not give up.

    More than once, I've dreamed of a big white farm house with an apple orchard behind it.  Sometimes there are two little red headed girls holding my hands.  Sometimes there are many children.  Sometimes there's a huge wiry haired dog named Old Tom.  Sometimes there's a barn cat with no name that keeps the mice away.  But every time, there is him and me, sweating into the land on hot summer days  listening to the sound of thunder in the distance, or sitting by a warm fire watching heavy snowflakes disappear into the night.

    He told me once, a long time ago, that if you find the right life, and we all eventually do, you will click into place and repeat your bliss over and over and over.  

The dreams tell me that the black fog of death is not the answer.  It's not a friend or even a foe, but only a short resting place for the weary hearted.  The dreams tell me not to stay there too long.  That I don't have to be so overcome.

    At the end of the road, there is an old white farmhouse with an apple orchard behind it.  I just have a few lessons to learn first.  So I wake up and fight the pains of this life, see what there is to learn in this place.  My daughters are on the porch, waiting to take my hands.  Old Tom is waiting in the orchard.  The cat's in the barn, waiting for a snack.  And he's in all those places, clicked into place at last, waiting for me too.