Dreams

I dreamt last night there’d been a mistake.

Somehow, despite your ashes resting in an urn on the sideboard.

Somehow, despite the funeral and the eulogies and the tears.

Somehow, despite your months-long absence.

Somehow, we were wrong.

You were alive. You were better.

I discovered this when my phone buzzed while I was out with the children. Your name was on the screen. A message from you.

The night before, in my consciousness, I had messaged your phone, had messaged you, wherever you are. But not wherever you are because I know you are here, next to me, with us.

Still, I sent the message into the void.

“I need to talk to you,” I wrote. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

Not I can’t.

When you departed this physical world, you left with me your deep and concrete belief in my certain capacity to do these things, to parent our children by myself but still with you, your voice echoing in my mind, telling me I already have the answers, assuring me that, though I don’t want to do this alone, I most certainly can.

The message was sent, into the ether, and I went to sleep.

You responded in my dreams.

You wrote that you’ve been here all along. That you’d been sitting at the kitchen island, reading all the messages you’d missed, from me, from our babies, from your friends and people who love you.

I hurried to get home to you. It was all a mistake, I thought.

He’s ok.

He never left.

I didn’t get to you in time. Somewhere along the way, I awoke.

I lay in the darkness of our bedroom.

It wasn’t a mistake, I thought.

But he is ok.

He never left.