Do Not Misunderstand Me

I had a dream this week in which Basil and some of our friends had put together a memorial slide show for my father. I do not know which friends were with Basil in the dream–I just felt their presence, like a medium on so many corny ghost hunting shows.

I only remember one slide from the presentation, which I saw just before waking. It was a black slide, with white and red script-like font that read:

“Do not misunderstand me: I do not want the darkness. Xxxxxxxxxxxxx.”

-Mark R. Siegel

In my dream, the x’s were another sentence that conveyed something beautiful. But as I tried to focus on the slide, my alarm went off, and I awoke, eyes now fixed on the ceiling of my Indianapolis hotel room.

I texted Basil immediately about the dream, in part to help me remember what I could before the detail continued to fade from my mind. But I also hoped typing out the first sentence from the slide would prompt the second to come back to me.

It did not.

I Googled the phrase, wondering if I had plagiarized someone in my dream. When no matching results came up for the first part of the quote, I was relieved: it is always nice to revel in an idea that isn’t immediately identifiable as someone else’s. But I was also frustrated: if the quote wasn’t from something, someone else, how was I ever going to remember what the rest of the slide said?

I sat down with a piece of paper and a pen, writing out the first part of the quote. Then, I sat there with the pen hovered above the surface of the paper, hoping something would move me, like someone resting their hand on a Ouija Board dial.

Nothing.

About a year after my father died, I was sitting around talking with a friend of mine. He mentioned a pair of great aunts he had whom, in their late seventies, still often mentioned the passing of their mother fifty years prior. I can no longer remember the end of or what prompted this conversation, but I remember his tone in bringing up his great aunts and their lamentation of their mother. Remembering the dead is one thing, my friend implied, but there is a point at which mopey memorializing is no longer warranted.

Shortly thereafter, I asked my friend Anthony if he thought I talked too much about my dad.

“You talk about him now as much as you did when he was alive.” Anthony said. I can’t remember if Anthony verbalized it or just conveyed it, as he often did with his kind demeanor, but either way he told me what I was doing was okay.

Every time I sit down to write about my father, I think of both of these conversations, each time fighting a short war with myself. And I thought about them again the morning I sat there this past week, trying to remember the second part of something my father may have never actually said or written. Even after I had to give up on conjuring the second sentence to my pen and get ready for work, I kept trying to write it in my head.

“Do not misunderstand me: I do not want the darkness. But I want to walk through it to see what is on the other side.”

Ugh. So corny, so expected. That can’t be it.

“Do not misunderstand me: I do not want the darkness. The darkness comes to me, unbidden.”

Blergh: sounds like freshman Goth poetry.

“Do not misunderstand me: I do not want the darkness. But when it surrounds me, I have no choice but to let my eyes adjust, as I do in the light.”

Great–a script for a vision test. Nice work Siegel.

When I read the second sentence in my dream, I was filled with warmth and marveled at the poignancy of what I read. Nothing I could think of since I awoke came close.

The further I got into my day, the more unsatisfactory second lines I thought of, the more I had to surrender to the comedy of the situation. Which made me think of my father laughing. And then I tried to remember the sound of my father’s laugh.

There was a terrifying moment where I thought I had forgotten it. I could see him opening his mouth, but the soundtrack which once overlaid this vision was gone. And so I sat and thought, closing my eyes to really commit to the meditation. My heart started to beat faster in my chest as I sorted through my memories.

First this fucking quote, now this. Am I going to keep forgetting? How have I managed to lose it? What is wrong with me?

But just as I was a few breaths away from full-blown panic, I found my father’s laughter: I could once again hear his chuckle, his snicker, and his hearty guffaws. My shoulders, which instinctively shrug up closer to my ears when I get tense, started to loosen and relax. I felt the same warmth which had come from reading the slide in my dream sweep back over me, a temporary peace restored.