Shared Comfort

There is always another layer of awareness, understanding, and delight to be discovered through synchronistic and serendipitous events.

~Hannelie Venucia

My father died on August 25, 1995. Throughout his whole life, he’d been riddled with illness the way an old oak tree is blighted by heart rot fungus. The diseases might lie dormant for a year or a season, but they were woven into his genes and would blossom forth with depressing regularity. He got epilepsy at fourteen and tuberculosis at sixteen. He developed arthritis at twenty and smashed his skull at forty. He broke his neck twice and was quadriplegic for the last twenty years of his life and more than half of mine.

Yet his fear of death was greater than his dread of pain. He died, waking from a coma to cry out, “I don’t want to go yet.”

I didn’t mourn, though I’d loved him deeply. I was more than ready. Everyone was — except Daddy.

For more than a year, I had no dreams. My nights were empty as death.

Then, on August 25, 1997, exactly two years later, I began to dream:

A puppy was trapped upstairs on the wooden deck of our old house. The deck was so fragile and delicate that even cats feared it, but Daddy climbed up to it with confidence. Cradling the dog in his arms, he leapt into space and landed softly on the grass.

On October 25, 1997…

I dreamed he went diving sixty feet underwater clad only in swim trunks. He emerged from the sea like a geyser, hands dripping with rubies, pearls and golden coins.

And on December 25, 1997, I had the most amazing dream of all.

Daddy sat, back straight, legs folded as neatly as a basket woven into a lotus, framed by the arc of a huge cave. Its darkness was absolute, impenetrable, vast as a starless night. Before him, the earth fell away, dropping into a bottomless pit as round as a planet.

He saw me and smiled. “Come here,” he said.

“I can’t,” I said, motioning to the hole. “I’ll fall.”

“It’s not a real hole,” he said. “It’s just an illusion. You can walk across.”

I reached out and touched the darkness with my toe. He was right. The hole was painted onto the earth — a clever deception, a mini masterwork, a delusion of depth. I crossed it in three steps.

“Daddy,” I said. “Why is it that in life you were crippled — sometimes you couldn’t even curl your fingers around a fork or raise your arm to feed yourself — but now you are always super agile, swimming underwater without tanks and climbing up to the deck that even our cats avoided?”

“When we die,” he said, “all the pain and suffering — all the ills that are physical — fade. The body is only a surface, only skin. But the truth inside, that survives. This is my truth.”

I never told anyone but my sister about those dreams.

Years later, Mom died. As far as death goes, one might say it was a good one, but no death is ever good.

She lay in bed, ready to go, young eyes peering from an old face. She smiled, wanting to be free from pain — free from the congestive heart failure that drowned her nightly.

After Mom passed, my sister began emptying drawers, tossing journals and photographs into the trash. I tried to stop her. I’d been living with my mother, caring for her as best I could. My sister had been grateful, but now she wanted to finalize things faster than I was ready for. After two days, she departed, leaving me alone in the empty house.

That night, I was awoken by the howling of my mother’s cat. He was on her bed. I climbed in beside him. He purred and snuggled into me. We slept for a few hours and then awoke. The cat sat up on the bed, looking blankly into the dark, sniffing the night. His head turned from side to side. His eyes widened, glowing in the dark. Then, he leapt off the bed and cowered beneath it.

“What is it?” I asked. “What do you see, boy?” But there was no answer. I went back to sleep and awoke a while later with a thought in my mind. It wasn’t deep or profound. It was simple, silly, and possibly not even original. Nevertheless, I wanted to save it.

I pulled open the drawer of my mother’s bedside table, searching for paper. They had already been emptied by my sister. My hands moved in the empty drawer, hollow as a coffin. Then, trapped in the metal drawer slide, I felt a single piece of paper.

The moon had risen and shone in the window. By its light, I could see that the page was used on one side. On the blank side, I scribbled down my thoughts and fell back into a dreamless sleep.

The next day, I read what my mother had written on the paper I had found during the night. It was topped with a date: August 25, 1997.

I had the strangest dream. Jules climbed up the back trellis onto the terrace to rescue a dog. He took the puppy in his arms, and he leapt into the back yard. Very odd.

A few lines down, the paper was dated October 25, 1997.

Dreamt of Jules again tonight. He was diving in the ocean, deep as a scuba diver but without any equipment. Every time he rose from the sea, he brought treasure with him.

I rummaged in the drawer once more, searching, hoping but not daring to believe. And then I found it: a single page that had fallen under the drawer. It was dated December 25, 1997.

Dreamt of Jules again. He was sitting like a yogi in the entryway to a huge, dark cave. Before him lay a bottomless pit. He smiled when he saw me and motioned me toward him. “Come here,” he said.

I pointed to the pit.

“It’s not real,” he said. “It’s only an illusion. You can walk across.”

He was right. The hole was painted onto the bare earth.

“Jules, why do I have these dreams?” I asked. “In life, you were crippled, but now you are almost superhuman.”

“When we die,” he said, “pain, suffering, all the ills of the physical fade. The body is only skin. But the truth inside, that survives. This is my truth.”

That was all she wrote. It was enough.

I sat on the bed that still smelled of her. I looked over at the deck that Daddy had ascended so easily. It was covered by the twisted limbs of old roses and wisteria. A few lavender ringlets hung down like fragrant tears.

I called my sister and read her Mom’s notes. We were silent for a while, remembering, forgiving, healing — taking comfort in each other and in our parents’ last gift.

— E. E. King —