Dealing With It

I’ve had some strange dreams lately. I really don’t know what to make of them, so I’m doing my best to ignore them. As is usually the case, I only remember dreams if I wake up in the middle of one. Disturbing images are not so incomprehensible, but sorting out what motivates some dreams gets very hard. Why would you dream of someone you long ago made peace with? Especially if that dream consists of that person telling you they had some horrible malady and that they were going to die in the coming months? You know of many other people who might be distressed with that news, even people who you care about. But are you supposed to reopen old closed doors and feel extreme sorrow or are you supposed to take it in stride the way we all must as we grow older and our acquaintances start to fade to dark? These are difficult issues in the stillness of the night when these dreams wake you up, but I am less concerned that they will plague my waking moments. What does that say about me?

I had a friend and colleague who died about three years ago. He was younger than me and was sort of a protege of mine. I went to his funeral on the other side of the country and found his nuclear family to be very embracing of me, saying how much I meant to him, even though I didn’t really know them that well. In keeping with my suspicions, I have not thought much of them since and they have not reached out at all to me either. We have all gone about our lives. The times when I remember him are when I gather with a small group of mutual friends. We have all noted his absence and mentioned how strange it feels that the world has kept on turning without him… without missing a beat. I don’t think about him too often, but there is still a noticeable hole in the firmament that I am aware exists due to his absence.

Recently, another old friend died. He was older and yet very much a business peer of mine. Unlike my other friend, he was experiencing noticeable cognitive decline towards the end, so his passing, though sudden, was not so unexpected. In this case, I was actually quite friendly with his nuclear family and indeed, it was his son who called to give me the news. Several weeks have now passed and I have yet to hear of any arrangements. I am not anxious about that, and I’m not sure I will travel east for any service. The truth is that I vacillated between liking and disliking this person. I say that even though it is a bad idea to speak ill of the dead. It seems to me that there is less of a rupture of the universe over his passing (at least from my perspective), probably because he was older and it seemed more like his time, whatever that means. I can also picture this friend in his better moments, but there was always something that seemed mortal about his manner. This is strange to say, but I could envision him as dying at some time and that did not feel out of place. When we spoke recently, he was less clear and present. I never once had that sense about my younger friend.

I have two friends that are much older than me (15-20 years) and they are both doing well. Both are what I would consider dear friends for whom I would go cross-country to memorialize. They are both still very vital in their own ways and I feel I can have an engaging conversation with either of them on many subjects. They always seem to have things on the go even though they are each operating at slower speed than they used to. I feel that they would both leave a meaningful void in my life if and when they leave this world. That makes me feel that I want to be thought of in the same way. I want to stay vital in whatever ways that I can. I am less talking about climbing mountains and more talking about the life of the mind, but vitality is a palpable thing and I prize vitality.

I know that some might attribute that differences that I am noting to be about the older/younger configuration, but I don’t think that’s it. I think it has more to do about one’s life force. One dead friend had that force about him and the other did not. One seemed to have much yet to do and the other seemed to have done most of what he was meant to do and was either on autopilot or somewhat withdrawn into his own version of a cocoon. One had an agenda and the other seemed to be biding time.

And there was yet again another friend who died not so long ago. He is all over our walls in the form of artistic photographs he had taken. I collaborated on many projects with him in both a business and artistic nature. He was also younger than me, but like my older friend, he seemed more spent than vital. My last conversations with him always began about his health and then went on to other business. The inevitability of his demise was also present for some time. But at least he left a legacy, that to me was imbedded in his eye to the world through his photographs. I guess that’s my way of saying that perhaps vitality is something you can spread like peanut butter onto various surfaces. In his case he spread it onto photographic paper. That may be a reason I am so dogged about my writing. I hope I am not depleting my vitality by doing so, ending up with an empty jar of peanut butter, but I also feel that the things that are inside me should have a medium for escape and perhaps even quasi permanence. Now that we live in a digital world, who knows what the longevity of my expressions is likely to be.

The person on my dreams who told me of their imminent death is someone who lived a more constrained life than not. There was never much news of unexpected happenings, but there was also never any pall or expectation of death (other than in the normal due course). That all makes the dreamland message all the more perplexing. I do not feel much like sharing this dream at a personal level, so I guess I am writing about it instead on a no-names basis. We all must deal with death in our lives at one time or another. Some are traumatized by it early in life. Others experience a series of tragedies that weigh down their own vitality. I feel I have been more fortunate than most. My family deaths have come more or less on schedule or later, so dealing with them has been somewhat normalized. I can almost say that I gained vitality through the losses since they urged me on in writing for one reason or another.

We pause, we reflect, we grieve, we remember and then we move on if we are doing this properly. The progression has seemed altogether normal and mild in its impact on me to date. A wrenching death has not been part of my story and I hope it stays that way. I hope that person in my dream never gets to the place I imagined and that life goes on for a long time yet. I never wish ill on another, no matter what they have done. I do feel sorry for people who have lost or perhaps never had vitality and live small lives in constrained ways. I’m sure they don’t see that in themselves, such is the protective nature of the psyche. But while I do not want immortality or statues and artificial remembrances, I do hope that when it is my time, those who knew me will feel a small gap left in the firmament where my vitality once shown through. Then I want them to move on since dealing with it is part of life.

I wrote this story a few days ago and now I am sitting here thinking about election night and the very distressing continued show of support for Trump and the MAGA principles. As I am awaiting Kim’s return from her rehearsal tonight, I know I will need to give her some solace about what increasingly looks like a disastrous outcome and a degree of uncertainty about the future of our world. As I pondered what to write tomorrow, I noticed that the story in my queue for tomorrow is too appropriately titled “Dealing With It”. And guess what? While the outcome is not definitive yet, for the first time in this cycle, I am preparing myself for a bad outcome and forcing myself to …. deal with it. At this moment I have no idea what that means, but I’m ready to sort it out as I must.