a dream

It was not all weird sort of things in dreams. One time I dreamt a writing idea so inspiring that I actually reached out to my notepad in my dream. Failing to find my notepad in my dream, I made a mental note that I should put the voice recorder next to my pillow to dictate my dreams. The next morning, I woke up remembering everything except what the idea was about.

Now if I think really hard, it was about my grandmother dying in a room that had two doors. I was holding her hands hoping that she was in peace. But I had to let go of them to fend off invading strangers who mistook the room for a public refuge. There was some sort of conflicts going on outside the room, which I did not bother to investigate. I asked them to leave so we could be alone. They refused and argued with me. My grandmother did not die in peace. Nor did I get to spend her last breaths with her.

I don't know if my grandmother loved the people surrounding her deathbed. But I know that she loved me and I was not there for her for stupid reasons...I was doing my internship at a paper in the south and my dad wanted to save him the cost of my return trip. In order to do that, they led me to believe that she was dying that night.

When I got the telephone call, I thought she had only a few minutes left. I whispered in her ears that I was there, my dear grandmother and bid her farewell. She had already been paraplegic and mute for many years at that time. But according to the people who surrounded her and who did not love her half as much as I did, she had tears rolling off the corners of her eyes when she heard my voice. After that, I hung up and cried in the darkness. She died two days afterwards. I would have made it back in time.

I often wondered what it would be like if I made it. Whichever way I imagined, I would not be left alone with her. The people that did not love her would surround us. Our sorrow and love would drown in the pandemonium caused by those irrelevant onlookers. When I drove off those strangers and came back to my grandmother in my dream, she was cold. She looked finally at peace in her white overcoat and brittle white hair. I broke down and cried.