The Cave

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

~Robert Byrne

Like most people, I’ve had dreams so bizarre that even the most gifted psychologist couldn’t decipher them. I’ve had recurrent dreams since childhood about seeing UFOs and moving objects with my mind. Lost loved ones have visited me, giving me information right when I needed it.

I’ve even had dreams that seemed to predict the future, like when I dreamt about an old friend I hadn’t spoken with in over a decade and then received a phone call from him the next day. But until a few months ago, I never had a dream that left me so shaken that I called a friend who is a Christian minister and asked him to pray for me.

The dream started out very happily. I was riding a dirt bike along a sunny forest path. I came to a mountain and saw the entrance to a cave. I stopped, hesitant to enter, but then I thought it would be fun to explore so I rode in. I was my usual cautious self, entering the cave slowly and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness.

The cave was shaped like a tunnel. I could see a light far in the distance so I pedaled toward it until the wall on the left suddenly ended, opening to a giant cavern too deep and dark to see the bottom.

I was a little nervous but continued on. I was picking up speed when my right pedal suddenly collided with a small boulder, and I careened to the left toward the cliff. Before I could hit the brakes or turn away, I went over the edge, plummeting downward.

As I fell, there was no dreamlike quality. Every emotion I felt was exactly what I would feel in real life — shock, horror, panic, and sheer desperation to save myself somehow.

I saw a ledge approaching below. It was covered with rusty steel mining equipment. I knew if I landed on it, I would be broken to pieces, but at least I might survive. I had no control over my direction, so all I could do was hold onto the bike and hope I hit the ledge, but I missed it completely. With all hope lost and gaining speed, I hurtled deeper into the blackness that I knew would end with my crashing into the cold, hard ground with zero chance of survival.

I continued falling long enough to think about my wife and two daughters at home. My heart sank even further when I realized they would never know what happened to me. Nobody would, except perhaps some explorer years or centuries later who happened upon my bones and rusted bicycle. I cried harder, knowing with absolute certainty that my life was about to end.

Denial set in. This couldn’t happen to me. I had such big plans. Worst of all, I would never see my family again. It couldn’t be true, but it was. I was grieving my life while still living its final moments and thoughts. The wind in my face grew colder as I approached the cavern floor. I knew it would be the last thing I felt in this world. I saw a flash of the ground coming up, screamed, and hit it full-force.

I awoke with a gasp and sat up at the edge of the bed, struggling to breathe. My wife asked if I was okay. I couldn’t answer. She turned on the light, growing concerned because I’d had a medical emergency a year earlier that had caused me to become disoriented, turn white, and pass out. At that time, my wife, who is a nurse, had to do chest compressions to revive me. Paramedics were called. I lost consciousness again at home and at the hospital. Each time, my heart rate decreased to less than thirty beats per minute.

A battery of tests was done. There was talk of pacemakers and epilepsy, but neither of those theories turned out to be correct. In the end, the doctors said I had a severe panic attack and gave me the usual advice — control stress and exercise more. Just my luck, I was exercising in my dream, and it got me killed.

My main source of stress over the past few years had been the loss of my father from complications due to Parkinson’s disease and dementia. The last three years of his life were a trip to hell and back.

I had lost my only sibling more than twenty years earlier, and several friends along the way, but losing a parent was different. It made me acutely aware of my own aging process and mortality. I always looked and felt young for my age, but time had been catching up with me in the usual ways — more gray hairs, more difficulty staying in shape, and the mental spinouts that come with age.

I became a father late in life, so part of me still futilely wishes I could stay forever young for my children. I joke with friends that I looked young before I had children, but now I’m on the “Rapid Aging Program” caused by lack of sleep and worrying about them hurting themselves.

I was so rattled by the nightmare that I called my best friend Dean, a Christian preacher. He prayed on the phone with me. I felt better but still spent the next week or so unable to shake off the fear I had felt. It was more like a memory than a dream, as if it had actually happened and I had cheated death somehow. I kept seeing the ledge, my only hope of survival, passing me by, and the horrible blackness of death below.

But as time passed, I began to feel a strange sense of liberation, as one might feel after surviving a car crash or some other calamity. I was alive. I still had a chance to do everything I had planned. I could call my mother, who is still alive and healthy, and tell her I love her. I could be a better son, father, husband and friend. I stopped thinking so much about all the years behind me and focused on the decades I still have left to live, and all that I might see and accomplish if I can finally get out of my own way.

In his book The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell wrote, “The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life’s joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life… The conquest of fear yields the courage of life.”

I concluded that, as horrific as it was, the nightmare was a warning to take better care of myself (avoid the cliff). It’s easy for something bad to happen that we are unable to foresee (the boulder), and once the process of death is in motion (the falling), it’s often too late to stop it. The nightmare became an important lesson. It had it all, even a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

I have been given a second chance, and I’m making the changes I need to make. I have committed more than ever to loving and savoring the precious gift of life. I know death will come eventually, as it does for us all. When it does, I will rest easy knowing that I pursued my dreams fearlessly and, more importantly, lived and loved with all my heart.

— Mark Rickerby —