I awoke the other morning with a kiss still warm on my lips. The dream had been fleeting but the sensation lingered. I’d held his face between my hands, looked into his eyes and kissed him. Not a heated kiss, a gentle one – I tasted him. In that split second I felt him.
I tried to relive that moment as I was waking up today and was reminded again that dreams and memories are two different things. You can remember a dream, you can’t recreate it. I remembered the sensation of my lips lingering for a moment on his cheek, the glow of a day shining on his face, his hair flattened with the effort of labor. He tasted of salt and sweat and smelled like dust. The moment was ordinary and extraordinary in the same beat of my heart – I knew it was special even as I was dreaming.
It’s the first time I’ve felt him with me since his passing, the first time I’ve had the sensation that he was really here. I’d like to feel like that all the time, but I don’t. I feel like I’m living in the void he left behind. It’s quiet here, my purpose rattles around a vacant house. I go from room to room and survey the jobs I should be doing, the projects half started, and try to summon the gumption to finish them. Motivation comes and goes and leaves me in the dust of its passing.
I want to sleep and live in that dream. I want to fall into the embrace of imagined arms and listen to the beat of a familiar heart. I want the pieces of me to come together and make a person again. I want…
Time doesn’t travel backwards, I can’t rewind my life, so I will point myself to the future and get on with this day. I will lean on that dream and let the memory of it keep me company for a while. I will imagine him walking beside me. I will think about that kiss and wait for another. I will remember, until I dream again.