Within my dream a message

I can’t seem to shake that dream I had last week – I’ve been walking around with it in my pocket for days. The actual dream happened in a split second but was so vivid I can’t stop thinking about it. I saw him clearly, I felt his presence. The more I think about that dream the more relevant it feels. 

In the dream I whispered ‘I love you’ and watched a smile sneak across his face.

‘I know.’ He said.  He seemed to realize I was worried that he didn’t. 

And then I woke up.

I can’t count the number of ‘I love you’s we exchanged over our forty years together – countless ‘I love you’s.  I think we said ‘I love you’ even when we didn’t like each other very much – it was like ‘good night’ or ‘goodbye’ – we finished our day with it. 

I worried at times that we said it out of habit, three little words that popped out of our mouths because they’d been doing it forever. I worried we didn’t mean it or feel it anymore. And then he died. 

He said a final ‘I love you’ just moments before he passed away. I was so shocked I thought I’d imagined it. I whispered a surprised ‘I love you too’ and checked over my shoulder to see if the girls had heard it too.  They had.  And then he died. 

I had been pushing; for more time, pushing the system, pushing him; for so long I fear I’d forgotten how to be tender, forgotten how to be in the moment. Even as he lay dying I was falling backwards through time, trying to obliterate what we were facing and trying not to think about the tomorrows. Backwards to a time when we may have been able to write a different ending. 

It was me who said ‘stop the treatment’.  Me who said ‘take the pain away’.  I didn’t know he’d never wake up again.  I didn’t know…  But what if I had known?  Would I have wished for more confusion? More time at his expense?  We were out of time, out of tomorrows. It was time. Time to stop the pain.  

We never left him alone in that dimly lit room once the treatments stopped – we filled the void left by his pain with our own.  We reminisced, laughed and cried and watched him listen.  I know he heard, his eyebrows moved slightly – I know he saw the stories behind closed eyes.  I held his hand and watched the minutes slip away.  He whispered a breathy ‘I love you’,  and then he died.

I hold his final ‘I love you’ in the deepest part of my heart, a sacred spot reserved for him. In the spot where dreams can breathe, a place we can connect again.  

In my dream I whispered ‘I love you’, and he said ‘I know’. And I need to believe he does.