A Greater Chance at Sunrise

I awoke in the blue hour with a nightmare (the constant plague of the active imagination). Every time I batted my eyes a new bloody dismembered something was in the muddled straw of my Uncle’s barn, being nibbled by a pig crossed with a baby.

Yeah. That isn’t creepy.

 

Last week it was sharks. My entire cast of Les Belles Soeurs were pulled under to be munched on, one by one. I managed to get my daughter on top of the upturned boat but some of the cast members were trying to pull her off so they could scramble to safety. I chose to bite into my arm until I bled and swam away from the boat to draw the sharks, but to no avail. All my daughter saw was me abandoning her instead of me trying to save her life.

Nice.

 

This is my nightlife and always has been. My mind is light by day and dark by night. Why? It’s not like I live in denial of death, sorrow and violence during the day, provoking my subconscious to explore it only when I’m not awake. I’ve tried watching what I eat before bed, watching what I watch. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem to be about the  “blot of mustard or a crumb of cheese”, the gruesome and terrifying images come and only waking up completely and praying keep them from staying with me all day.

Perhaps because they do mean something. My beloved Uncle is dying and I can’t be with him and I haven’t seen much of my daughter during the run of this show because my hours have been so inhospitable. It all makes sense.

Perhaps it’s not so much that I don’t admit these things are happening, but that I live my life at such a heady pace, I don’t really have time to mourn losses and absorb pain and regret properly. So it leaks out of my head when I’m sleeping, spills out of my ears, spiders out of my mouth, runs down my nose and slithers out from under my shivering eyelids. I make myself ill in my body and mind when I don’t slow down and take it in. I had a migraine yesterday and I couldn’t understand what brought it on and when I allowed myself to actually stagger to bed one eye shut, all medicated up…I wept. Surprised me. Then it didn’t surprise me.

My Uncle taught me how to drive a standard, my Uncle taught me how to ride a horse, my Uncle showed me how to feed a newborn calf, my Uncle advised me to marry a man as strong as I was or I wouldn’t respect him, my Uncle sits at the head of the table, my Uncle makes the ice rink in the field, my Uncle reads from the book of Luke at Christmas, my Uncle knows that Bugs Bunny is funny, my Uncle sneaks a kiss of his wife’s neck while she’s doing dishes, my Uncle has a million mysterious magician-like tools in his shed, my Uncle can talk to animals and they listen, my Uncle always wins the card games, my Uncle is why the word “chortle” was invented, my Uncle saw the world and tended the earth, my Uncle could sooth any crying baby, my Uncle sleeps in church and nobody minds, my Uncle ran for office and danced with the wallflowers at weddings and wrestled with his kids and threatened whisker rubs and walked down the lane with Grandpa and jimmied jammed barbed wire cattle gates. My Uncle is blessed assurance and the solid rock. My Uncle is the great big passionate man who is safe. Safe. Safe. Without him, I know I would have stayed unhinged. My nightmares would be waking, I wouldn’t be well. I know it. And I am. And I am only one of hundreds of people in his life that he’s healed. That he’s loved. Simply by being good. A really good man.

I was lucky enough to see him to likely say good-bye for the last time…a few weeks ago. I flew in to attend my world premier of The Thin Man adaptation at Vertigo theatre in Calgary. I rented a car and drove out to see him. I literally had half an hour and then had to drive back in time to catch the show, then back to rehearsals the next day in Vancouver. The first fifteen minutes I swear were taken up with relatives talking about dishwashers and I thought, I have to somehow break this light banter and say what I have to say. I wasn’t very articulate. I think I said something about chopping heads of chickens with him and: “I would be a moron without you”. But I think he knew what I meant as I sat at his feet and blubbered against his knees. He put his big warm hand on mind and told me he loved me.

These beloveds. These dear beloveds in my life. What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing that I don’t spend more time with them?

I pondered these things, post nightmare. Then I got up to get a glass of water, brush my teeth, anything to wash the taste of pig baby out of my mouth…my fellow was wakened.

“What’s up, Bella?”

“Nightmares again.”

I snuggled back into bed, freshly grateful to have him beside me. Most of my adult life I’ve slept alone. I reached out to him.  I’m sure he has a love hate relationship with this impulse…

His alarm goes off soon after and he’s up and out of the house at six thirty. (yesterday it was five.) I can’t go back to sleep.

A little celebrated benefit of longer nights and shorter days is the increased opportunity to catch sun rises and sun sets. I pull on clothes that contain some sort of fuzziness because the house is cold and I start the kettle singing and build a fire in the fireplace. I hope this is one of my Uncle’s “good” days.

I watch the sky lighten as I sip my tea and poke at the flames that slowly warm my house. The sea starts to twinkle with the sun. The ripened pear looks so gorgeous against the purpled last of my show flowers. The breeze tickles the needles on a pine tree until it shivers with delight. My mind returns to the light.