Into the Night

 I don't know why this death has hit me harder than the others, but it has sent me on a yearlong journey I wasn't prepared for.

When friends and family die, I am used to having a couple dreams where they come visit, usually frequently the first few weeks, and then it peters out and they'll happen sporadically in the ensuing years. That has not been the case this time.

My Nana has become a frequent visitor in my subconscious, as have both my grandmothers' houses become a frequent destination. The dreams are always different, but there is a common thread in them: I know that Nana is dead, I know that the houses no longer belong to them, and I know that I am dreaming, while I am in the dream. This is a new phenomenon I'm still getting used to. 

It is off-putting to visit with someone, and consciously know they're not really there, even in your own mind. And it makes me question myself and the reality of it. Are they bringing me messages and trying to teach me something, to bring comfort or warnings? I worry that I'm cracking up. How could they, how could any of it be real, when it's all happening inside my head. And then I'm reminded of that part in The Deathly Hallows, where Albus says

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

It feels real. The hurt when you wake up and they are gone, and you have to accept they're gone all over again is definitely real. That slow realization. That while in the dream you knew you were dreaming, but you wake up and you expect them to be just in the other room for a millisecond. The anagnorisis. 

And then the remembering comes.

It's the remembering that's the hardest. The most heart-shattering. Because for just a brief moment, everything was back to rights in your world. And then the house of cards comes crashing down. I'm reminded of Sarah McLachlan lyrics 

Into this night I wander, it’s morning that I dread
Another day of knowing of the path I fear to tread
Oh, into the sea of waking dreams, I follow without pride
‘Cause nothing stands between us here and I won’t be denied

My other grandmother enters hospice this week. It feels like the last tenuous tie to my childhood is slipping through my fingers, disintegrating on a spring storm's wind. I'm floundering. 

I am not alone, per se, without any tethers to my childhood intact. So long as parents, siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles remain, we all have at least a tiny pulse remaining of the nostalgic heartbeat of our youth. But with the inevitable demise of my grandmother the last and final tattoo of that heartbeat dies for me, it feels, because she is the last physical tie I have to my most influential relationships. Though I have other family, those bonds aren't the same, don't reach the same depths I've plumbed with my grandmothers. I'm not ready to face this so soon after the loss of my Nana. 

And I am grieving all over again, in a way, because I have to lose her a second time. Seven years ago, I wrote about the emotions of losing a grandparent in the cognitive sense. The pain of losing that relationship to memory deterioration; that while the loved one is still physically present, the person they were to you for your whole life, well, that person no longer exists. I've had seven years to acclimatize myself to this eventuality. I didn't. 

I don't think anything can prepare you for the depth of the loss of watching someone wither away inside their own mind. No matter how many years you have to grieve for what has gone, nothing prepares you for what is to come when you have to say the final good-bye. 

I am not prepared to face the truths I have to face. I had the time to make more effort. I didn't take it. I convinced myself that there's no point when she's not the same person. That it would be like talking to a stranger. I had the time to make the effort to visit more. I didn't. I told myself I have to prioritize my own sanity, and visits home are too taxing on it with the way things are in our family. I stand by that one.

I've had to reconcile within myself that leaving home was the healthiest thing I could have done to protect my peace of mind, while knowing also at the same time it robbed me of the last 20 years with them. I have to hope that they understand. Understood, rather. I have to assume that where they're going, or where they've gone, they know more than me, see truths that I don't see, and have a cosmic understanding that is still foreign to me. Perhaps that's why I put so much stock into my dreams, the place where they dispense nuggets of wisdom like some ethereal Pez dispenser plugging me directly in to knowledge of the universe I can reach no other way. Perhaps it's why I search for meaning in obscure words and deeds created in subconscious brain wavelengths. Perhaps I am searching for connection. 

For reassurance. 

For absolution.