In the dream, Sheila floats and flares. “How much longer?” she asks. “I’m ready to rest now.”
Maybe she’s talking to me, maybe not. Regardless, the truth is heavy. “I have to start letting you go, don’t I?”
“Nah,” she says. “I’ll always be with you.”
“All the books say—” Great, I sound like Dad. “All the books say I should be letting go.”
“Letting go, moving on. It’s all a metaphor for something we don’t understand,” Sheila says.
“Do you understand it now? Where you are?”
Sheila looks off into the distance. “The point is just because I’m stuck here, doesn’t mean you have to be. You get to keep going.”
“I don’t want to go without you.” The footsteps I’ve always tried to walk in are fading in front of my eyes. I had that thought before, but it keeps coming back to me. It keeps aching.
“You’ll never be without me, loser.”
“Bully.”
“Tiny man with big hands!” Sheila’s mocking tone carries me back to the day we laughed so hard.
“I forgot that one,” I tell her. And even still, I don’t quite remember the full context. Who will I become, without her to remind me of the little things?
“Then pick something you’ll always remember, dorkopterix.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t you have something better to do?”
“Than bother you?” Sheila asks. “Not for a million years.”