I’ll Be Seeing You

Basil and I are pulling up to the place where the funeral is being held. The sky outside is the purplish orange of either dawn or dusk: I am not sure which it is because I don’t know what time it is. We are driving a white 2007 Honda Fit, a car I used to own but haven’t for many years. I have never seen a Honda Fit available for rent in the National Emerald Aisle of any airport I have visited. How could we have rented this car? What airport did we fly into to get here? I cannot remember.

The funeral home looks like most funeral homes: a single-story structure with architectural accents that harken back to the blandest building trends of the 1970s. The building is the kind of off-white color where it is impossible to tell if it was initially painted an off-white color or if the building is just very dirty and in need of a bath.

When I pull into the parking lot, there are enough people standing out around the cars already parked there that I am forced to stop the car I am driving and get out: before I can park it in a proper space, I am going to have to politely convince some of the funeral goers to step out of the way.

I walk up to the closest cluster of people and begin to search their faces so I can decide to whom I should direct my request for the group to move out of the way of any open parking spots. It is a circle of people comprised of mostly middle-aged women. Some of them are wearing hats, which obscure their faces. What faces I can see I do not know, until my eyes land on one face that is as familiar as one can be: it is my beloved Aunt Terry. Aunt Terry, who died in October 2018.

Whenever I get the chance to speak to dead loved ones in a dream, I never get around to mentioning or discussing with them the fact that they are dead. I do not know if this is because I am hoping against hope in the dream that all this time, I have somehow gotten it wrong and they are actually really alive, and the experience I have had of them dying was just a bad dream. More often I do not mention it in my dreams because I think it is something we are both aware of. It would be the analogous to pointing out the color of someone’s shirt to them: we both know this, so why are we talking about it?

I am stunned as I process Aunt Terry’s presence. I feel a surge of joy and the impulse to immediately hug her tight. She is wearing black flowing nylon-looking clothes with a brightly colored scarf comprised of hot pink and orange hues: she loved scarves while she was alive and seeing the fabulous one she is wearing reaffirms to me it must really be her.

Before I can say anything to her, about parking our rental car or otherwise, Aunt Terry says to me:

“James, I am so disappointed in you. You are underdressed for the funeral.”

These words bring an immediate flush to my face and I can feel my eyes stinging with tears. I cannot recall Aunt Terry ever telling me she was disappointed in me when she was alive and to have her say that on one of the special occasions we get to connect on whatever plain of existence we are currently inhabiting is gutting.

I look down at my clothes: I am wearing a navy-blue collared shirt, black dress slacks, and black dress shoes. My mind is reeling: I wouldn’t have thought this was terribly underdressed for a funeral. Should I have worn a tie? Should my shirt have been black instead of navy blue? Is it because I don’t have a jacket/blazer on?

Whose funeral is this anyway?

Basil joins me at my side as I try to apologize to Aunt Terry, “I am so sorry. We traveled to get here. I did not know this was not dressy enough. I can go back to the hotel and change. What else should I have on?”

But Aunt Terry turns on her heels without a word, her black clothes trailing behind her in the wind as she heads for the door of the funeral home. The people comprising the group she was standing with turn as well, following behind her like an obedient herd of black sheep.

I reach for and take Basil’s hand. I am trying not to cry and trying to decide what to do next. Should I run back to the hotel and change? Will I miss the service? Will missing the service be more disappointing to Aunt Terry than me being underdressed? Do I even have a tie or a jacket at the hotel?

I turn to get back in the car and I nearly run smack into my mother. She is standing there, wearing a god-awful floral pattern navy blue dress with a big navy-blue hat. I recognize it as the outfit she wore to my Aunt Marcie’s wedding back in 1995.

“You cannot come visit me, James,” she informs me. “Because of COVID 19.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay Mom–I wasn’t going to visit you anyway.”

When I wake up from the dream, I can still feel the pang of Aunt Terry’s disapproval. It is four o’clock in the morning. I lay in bed and try to understand what Aunt Terry may have been trying to tell me. What had I done lately that she would find so disappointing?

She absolutely adored my husband: I wonder if she is disappointed in something I did or didn’t do for Basil? I rack my brain, but nothing comes to mind. When Basil wakes up and I tell him about the dream, he assures me Aunt Terry is not disappointed in me, that she loved me very much. I try to find solace in this, but part of me still hurts and searches for what I may have done wrong.

I wonder when I will get to see her again, and if she will still be disappointed in me.

#

Basil and I have had conversations recently with different friends about dreams. One couple we know is comprised of someone who likes to tell their husband about their dreams. Their husband, on the other hand, complains about having to sit through tales of other people’s dreams. Why does he care about anything that didn’t actually happen? Tell him about something that occurred in real life—then he’ll care.

I have always dreamt a lot. I think dreams are important and mean something, although exactly what that is remains to be determined. I also like hearing about other people’s dreams: I find it fascinating to know a bit about what people’s subconscious minds are up to.

I want to come up with a counter argument and convince my friend’s husband he should give dreams a chance. But the words don’t come to me. I cannot think of what I should say. It makes me sad, like I have the opportunity to show him a rainbow which has just appeared in the sky behind him, but I cannot articulate the right words to get him to simply turn around and look at it.

#

Basil and I are standing in a big house. I am certain it is someone else’s house and not ours. Not because of how anything looks, not because of the physical surroundings, but rather because of an innate feeling I have.

The room we are standing in is so crowded it takes my eyes a while to adjust to what is going on. I figure out the room is actually a kitchen: a gleaming white one straight out of a HGTV home remodeling show, complete with subway tiles adorning the backsplashes. Everything is new and clean. No one appears to be cooking but trays of food and drinks are everywhere. People I do not recognize are bustling in and out of the kitchen into the other parts of the large house that isn’t our house: I guess someone must be having a dinner party.

I feel compelled to ask someone if there is something we can do to help, but I can’t figure out who we should ask. I grab Basil’s hand and look around: is there someone here we know?

Suddenly my father walks up to us, materializing out of the anonymous crowd. He is wearing a black t-shirt and black slacks. One of his favorite fedoras is perched atop his head.

“Hey Chan,” he greets me, a term of endearment he picked up when we lived in Japan during the early 1980s. He smiles at me and I feel like I have witnessed a miracle occur.

“Dad!” I throw my arms around him. We have met in many dreams in the 17 years since his death. Most of the dreamscapes we find each other in are like this: crowded, bustling unfamiliar areas, full of mostly strangers. I have often wondered if this raucous energy somehow carries him along, carries him to my dreams, like waves on an ocean.

I never want to end our embrace, but I know I must. I give him a chance to hug Basil. This is the first time I have gotten to see them meet in a dream. They never had the opportunity to get to know each in the reality I inhabit on a day-to-day basis: watching them hug each other overwhelms me with emotion.

After they let go of each other I grab my father’s hand and plead, “Dad: please don’t go until you really have to. Please stay as long as you can.”

He squeezes my hand, “I will stay as long as I can.”

The rest of the dream becomes a blur: Basil and I are navigating among the crowds of people in this unfamiliar house with my father. Dad helps us carry things for some parts of the dream. Other parts of the dream, he is redirecting us down the right hall in the house when the way we were traveling leads to a dead end. I would normally be frustrated because I do not understand what we are doing in the house or why we are there. But since my father is there to help, I do not worry about any of this, allowing myself to glide through the space, feeling safe between Basil and Dad.

When I wake up, I am disappointed my time to visit with my father is over. He does not reappear to me in my dreams in any kind of regular interval. Sometimes it will be a few months before I see him. Other times he is gone from my dreams for a few years. The infrequency of these visits convinces me it is really some part of him that comes to see me.

I always found my dreams to be important. As I get older, they become the only way for me to see some people I love so much, who are gone from this existence. I have to believe there is something meaningful in the space that allows us to connect with the dead. Sure: sometimes a dream is finding yourself suddenly sitting naked in a math class you passed out of two decades ago and you are dreading a final exam that is being handed out because you realize you haven’t gone to this trigonometry class all semester. But sometimes it gives you a chance to embrace those who have long since left your side in the conscious world. Rather than focusing on why these dreams might happen, I am instead so very grateful that, for whatever reason, they just do.