Sweet Dreams
I don't know how it started. And even though it's 3am and it just happened I feel the details fading.
I had the most wonderful dream.
Scott and I were standing in my parents old town house. We were standing in the hallway at the top of the basement stairs. Right next to the mirrored closet door, in the exact spot where I emerged from my bedroom in my parents basement for our first date.
He seemed shorter somehow. Almost like he couldn't quite stand to his full stature. Like an older, more worn man. Certainly not the tall, energetic young man I climbed those stairs for that first date.
He may have looked different, feeble almost, but he wasn't different. His hand was cooler than mine, like always. His smile resonated off his face and standing in his presence offered me such a quiet peace.
I don't know what we were doing standing there. Kate's cry comes out from the upstairs. He immediately begins to climb the stairs "I'll get Bug" he says. As I watch him struggle to the stairs, Kate's cries become more urgent. I quickly slip past him and run up the stairs. Passing him as he says "Good idea, go get our girl."
The top of the stairs and an immediate left, I look into the bedroom that long, long ago was mine (before the move to the basement) and see Kate laying on the bed that was my brother Mathew's when he took the room after my "big" move downstairs. The four poster bed that actually belong to my grandmother. The bed that was in Scott and I's first master bedroom, in that tiny first house. A bed, that now, in this much to large house, my parents sleep in when they spend the night.
There was a smaller Kate. Not tiny like a baby but certainly not as old as she is now. Maybe, the age she was when he left us.
She called out for me again. Going over to her I climbed in bed with her. That's not something we do. Kate and I have shared a bed exactly, 1 time, and that was the night he died. Without hesitation, like it was the most normal thing to do, I pulled back the covers and cuddled my girl.
At the foot of the bed, Scott climbed in and crawled over us. Sneaking under the covers he wrapped his arms around both of us. He said "I love my girls". The last words he spoke on this earth, and pulled us in tighter.
I couldn't soak up enough. Even in my dream, I knew how lucky I was to be there. How lucky I was to be "the chosen one" the one who he loved the most.
Looking past me, he points to something on the floor and says "Look at that monster! It's older than my dad's". An older CPU is sitting on the floor beside the bed. I turn to look at it. Turning back around, to talk to him, my breath catches. He's gone. My baby girl is asleep in my arms, were still in that old trusty, loved bed, in the house where I grew up but he's gone.
I don't feel sad really. I feel comforted. Stronger. Safer
The real monitor, in my real house, in this thing I call real life, carries Kate's voice to me "Mama... Mommy?" Hesitating, not wanting to let go of my dream. Not wanting to be without him again, I hear his voice "go get our girl."
As much as I wish I could have stayed in that dream forever, I'm glad Kate woke up. I might have forgotten this dream, had she not. Maybe I've had many dreams just like this one. Odly comforting.
Maybe writing it down, I'll be able to remember the feel of the comforter as he wrapped his arms around us. Or the coolness to his skinny hand. Maybe Kate will read this one day and know that he is always with us... if only in our dreams.
Sweet Dreams...
