22. Dream a Little Dream of Me

"The whole world is a dream, and death the interpreter."

~Yiddish proverb

From time to time, I have this dream.  The last time was the night of April 11th.  The dream is almost identical each time, with just a few minor variations.  The date is always sometime before April 7th.  Sometimes I find myself in the present; other times it's back in 2007.  Jon is there with me - alive and well - but somehow I know in the dream what's about to happen and it's my responsibility to tell him that he's going to die on April 7th.  I study his face as he processes the news and it makes my heart soar to be able to see him so clearly...but, at the same time, my heart breaks to know that it's only in my dreams I'll ever see his sweet face again.  Is it just my subconsciousness wishing things could somehow be different?  Is it my refusal to accept what I cannot change?  I never truly understood until I lost Jon how impossible it is to fathom the unfathomable.  From a young age, we're taught to solve all the world's problems, learn from our mistakes, and apologize for past indiscretions - there is always something more we can do, and few things are completely irreversible.  Death, however, is one of the few exceptions - death is as real and as final as it gets.  No matter what I do or how hard I try, I remain helpless and unable to change anything surrounding the reality of my husband's death.  For someone whose type-A, OCD-like personality has always controlled just about every aspect of my life, this reality is a rather difficult pill to swallow.  


Several of my classmates asked me recently if I'm okay.  I guess I must look sad.  I've been told a few times now that even when I smile, the smile never quite reaches my eyes.  Plus, it's never been too hard to figure out how I'm really feeling - my poker face (if I ever had one) needs an awful lot of work!  Most people ask how I'm doing in passing, as they tend to do in striking up casual conversation, and I usually give them the obligatory "oh, I'm fine" response.  A few days ago, however, one of my friends sat down in the chair next to me and asked how I really am.  I don't know why, but when I opened my mouth to answer, I couldn't speak.  I just burst into tears, right there in the middle of the law school hallway.  Luckily, there weren't too many people around at the time...but even if there had been, it wouldn't have mattered.  These kind of messy situations don't bother me nearly as much as they used to...after years of apologizing for the discomfort that always seems to hang over any conversation involving Jon's death, I find I have no more room in my life for awkward silence.  The right answer is always the honest answer...and at least my answer was honest, right?

On the other hand, there's a reason honesty isn't always easiest policy, especially when it comes to being honest with myself.  And if we're being honest here, the truth is that I'm exhausted.  My emotions are like a yo-yo at the moment - up one second and down (sometimes way down) the next.  It's as if I expected something to change or be different after the 5th anniversary of Jon's passing...but nothing has changed and nothing is different.  He is still gone, and I'm still here.  I keep coming back to the simple fact that I chose him.  I chose him to be my husband, to have and to hold, forever and ever.  We don't get to choose much in this life, but I chose Jon and he chose me.  It doesn't get much simpler or more beautiful than that.  A fellow widow joked with me the other day about inventing a time machine to go back to those happy times before we lost our husbands when life was still the fairytale we dreamed of as little girls.  I told her to let me know as soon as she finished inventing it - I'd pay any price to use it for just one day.


What I didn't choose was to find myself here alone with more time to think than I know what to do with.  "Enjoy being single," people tell me.  Or, "just get out there and meet someone else!"  At this point, it shouldn't really come as a big surprise that I don't want anyone else.  I have tried - and we all know how well that's worked out.  Dating has turned out to be been my worst (well, maybe second-worst) nightmare - the men I've dated have either taken me for all I have to give (trust, money, love, you name it), or the emotions involved just haven't compared to what I felt and still feel for my husband.  Seriously, how can some people be so cruel and heartless?  How can they know all too well what I've already been through and promise they'll never give me cause to shed any more tears and then use me for their own selfish purposes?  It's despicable.  I really don't understand how people like that sleep at night.  When I tried to reach out and comfort him during a rough time in his life, my last boyfriend (let's just call him "DS") told me that he didn't give a "rat's ass" about what I've been through...oh, and that people in general "don't give a shit" about me and what happened to Jon.  I just never thought he would be one of those people.  A few days ago, I caught up with a mutual friend who mentioned she'd spoken to him and that he said he was glad to no longer be in contact with me.  For a moment, I was literally speechless.  He is glad to no longer be in contact with me?  Why, so he can move onto some other vulnerable, unsuspecting girl while continuing to keep up the appearance of the perfect, happy family with his wife and kids?  Good thing he's setting such a great example for those poor kids to follow...I shudder now to think of everything I did for him in light of all the lies he told me and the woman (or women?) with whom he cheated on me while insisting to my face that honesty and fidelity were among the most important values in his personal moral compass.  Moral compass?  Um, what moral compass?  I'm sure I made many mistakes in the context of our relationship...but when a person constantly makes you feel paranoid for having suspicions that turn out to be 100% founded, who's really the "crazy" one here?  How can someone living a double life based on a twisted web of lies look at himself in the mirror and continue to insist that he's a good person?  It honestly makes me wish I'd never bothered with this whole dating thing.  Where has it gotten me?  I've now seen some of the ugliest parts of the human psyche (from which Jon always protected me while he was alive), and at the end of the day, it just makes me miss my husband more than ever.  If anything, I feel like I've somehow been unfaithful to Jon through these relationships that don't hold a candle to my marriage.  I guess I'm still like a naive teenager in assuming that people's intentions are inherently good - I couldn't live with myself if I did the things that DS did to me over the course of our relationship, but as it turns out, not everyone feels this way.


Thankfully, I can now laugh at many of the ridiculous lies and fabricated stories DS told me.  Although my family and friends continue to despise the guy for what he did, the anger and resentment I carried around with me a few months ago has faded.  The only thing that continues to sadden me is the fact that people like DS do in fact exist...and I doubt it's the last time I'll encounter one of them.   There are, unfortunately, some bad people out there, and in all likelihood, most of them will never change.  These people live long and prosperous lives, unaffected and untouched by tragedy, and face few, if any, consequences for their actions while continuing to manipulate and inflict pain upon others.  And then there are people like Jon - someone who could not possibly have been a better, kinder, or more selfless person and who was taken from us much too soon.  It just doesn't seem fair.  But I guess that's why we have that infamous saying:  life, as we learn the hard way, is not fair.  Good things happen to good and bad people alike.  I'm not sure if I believe in karma.  I'd like to...but it seems like a little too neat and tidy of an explanation in a world in which nothing is neat and tidy - besides being unfair, life is as messy as it gets.


My brother-in-law told me he also had a dream about Jon on the night of April 11th.  It was a similar dream to the one he has maybe once a month.  In it, he finds out or somehow becomes aware that Jon is dead and he cries and cries and sometimes screams and feels like he's drowning in a terrible, unimaginable nightmare.  When he wakes up, he realizes that the nightmare is in fact a memory - it's the memory of how he felt when he found out his little brother had been killed...and that feeling is no different or less devastating today than it was five years ago.  He may have other things now that distract him on a day-to-day basis, but the memory of the moment life changed forever is never far from his mind.  As he opened up and related the details of this dream to me, I literally cried with relief - it assured me that I'm not the only one who still loves and yearns for Jon constantly, no matter what else has happened and no matter how much time has passed.  As the years go by, I'm sure there will be other people who will hurt and use me..and there will undoutedly be many more days when I open my mouth to say I'm okay and can't get the words out past the tears.  But despite whatever life may throw at me, I will always be able to see Jon in my mind and in my dreams.   There he will be...and there I will find myself once more by his side.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll also find some peace and comfort in what happens next.