During another drought of inspiration, I searched through my essays that were never submitted for publication. During this search, I stumbled on an essay I had called Heaven on My Mind. I wrote it, probably after my first wife died, circa early 2017.
After reading my essay for the first time in years, I thought it needed a much better title. Though I did not think that there was really a word but lo and behold, dreamscape is defined as a dreamlike usually surrealistic scene, similar to a painting of a dreamscape. While this dictionary definition seems a bit redundant, it expresses exactly what I am trying to say. My dreamscape was two dreams about heaven with people familiar to me.
I guess most people dream. While I do not dream that often, sometimes I will have some very vivid ones. Most of my dreams reveal my deep sense of anxiety. I always seem to be late for a test or a class that I am taking or teaching. No matter how hard I try I just can’t find the building or the right room because I had neglected to get proper instructions. Variations of this dream have persisted into my eighties.
These dreams, which I do not remember having, had a bizarre twist to my usual scenario. While frantically searching for my location in one room, I came across my roommate of three years at Holy Cross, Peter T. Lawrence. He had died, on New Years Eve in 2012, several years before my dream. Though we were never close friends, we had been good roommates. The film Lawrence of Arabia was still popular. So, I called him Peter of Manhasset, one of the lesser Lawrences. I am not telling what he called me. It is not part of my makeup to grieve for long but for some inexplicable reason, his loss has camped out in my memories.
Though a year younger than me, he had a wisdom about him that belied our difference in age. I always trusted his counsel when we roomed together. In the dream, he calmly told me that everything was OK and I should not worry. Things would be fine. Like a magic drug, I immediately relaxed as I had found a small haven of peace and contentment. Then I woke up. Peter was dead and maybe in Heaven already or perhaps a special host in God’s Green Room. This marked the first time and maybe the only time that a dead person had appeared to me in a dream.
Months later on the night of Good Friday, I had an even more bizarre dream. I was driving in the country with lots of hills and maybe even mountains. I am not sure where I was going. Perhaps I was to meet somebody. Something told me to leave my car in an undisclosed place.
The next thing I knew I was walking down the streets of a small town or village, which may have been reminiscent of my last visit to Bar Harbor, Maine. In a few short minutes I ran into Maura, the only serious girlfriend I had in college. I don’t know if this was accidental or planned.
We must have talked for a few minutes when Barbara, my last girlfriend before I got married to Judy, came up to us. We all talked for a few minutes and then decided to go to a restaurant that had live music or some sort of entertainment.
While the three of us visited there, some waiter or patron spilled some ice water on my pants. This necessitated my changing into gray sweatpants, just like the ones I had at home. After a while, I started getting anxious because my mother expected me at a certain time and it was getting late. But of course, I had parked a far distance away.
At this point Maura left us and Barbara said she would drive me back to my car. She had remembered to bring my soaked pants with us. As we traveled through the countryside she started talking. I started to feel that same peace and contentment I had felt with Peter. I was no longer worried about being late. It was as if everything was right with the world and I did not have to worry about anything again.
Barbara and I had remained email pals for years before my wife died and even after. While Peter’s intellect had inspired me, it was Barbara’s spiritual guidance that had proved invaluable. My mother had died long before these dreams. If I was going home to see her did that mean I had died? If my mother is not in Heaven, no one I have ever known is. And did that make Barbara similar to Dante’s Beatrice, who gave him a tour of Paradiso? That would also mean that both Maura and Barbara were dead as well.
Then the doorbell rang loudly, waking us up. In my surreal world, it was 6:45 AM and our alarm clock, set for 15 minutes earlier, had failed to go off. We had told the lady who does our ironing not to come because Judy had a pre-opt appointment at the hospital at 8:15 that morning. But she showed up anyway.
While editing this piece, it occurred to me that the details of my rude awakening were terribly similar to my last morning on earth with my first wife but the timeline was way off. The rude awakening took place on October 7, 2018, and the dream months after that.
En route to the hospital, Judy became uncomfortable due to the brace, supporting her broken back. When we arrived, she needed a wheelchair and oxygen. Before I knew it, she was being wheeled off to the Emergency Room five minutes later. Within two hours, she was in ICU and receiving the Last Rites. By 8:03 the next morning, I was a widower.
So, eight years later, everyone in my dreamscape is dead except me. Both my lady friends have passed away since my dreams. Barbara died of cancer in July of 2022 while Maura passed away after a long illness on New Years’ Day of this year. What does all this mean? Is it just my Catholic imagination high on steroids? Or should I cut back my large intake of iced tea? Or perhaps God is telling me to have no fear of my own death because things will be all right?
