My wife was very sick, lying in a bed, fading away. She was saying things to me, but I can't remember what they were. She held my hand, closed her eyes, laid back.
Then she died.
That was the exact point where I woke up, and I practially dove over to the other side of the bed and wrap my arm around her to make sure that she was, in fact, still there. I knew I'd been dreaming, but I had to be sure. It scared me that much.
Mind you, this is an extremely weird dream to have in the wee hours the morning after you've been making love to the most important woman in your life. I was trying to think of what could have brought it on, and I remembered Michael.
Michael is this little boy my wife provided at-home day care for for quite a while. He was arranged for adoption by a family in town with three other children, before they found out he'd been born to a teenage mother who tried to hide the pregnancy and the birth both. He didn't enter this world properly, and as a result had massive brain and nervous damage. He was described as "basically a brain stem", blind and deaf, and wasn't expected to live for very long at all.
But Michael turned out to be a fighter for every bit of life he could grab hold of. He lived for nearly two years, and while he never could talk or walk, he could make sounds and smile when he felt a comfortable or a tickling touch. And even though he was supposed to be deaf, he was seen to smile on more than one occasion when someone was singing a peaceful song nearby.
On Christmas Day last year, Michael had to go to the hospital. His breathing was becoming difficult; the diagnosis was that his weakened brain was becoming exhausted with the effort of keeping his body alive. He was expected to live a few days. Again, he exceeded expectations.
All this time, I wanted to go over to the family's house and visit Michael one more time, but his parents were usually too upset or else too busy to have one more guest coming to see him. I never did get that chance.
Last night, though, my wife got a phone call from Michael's parents that he wasn't expected to live through the night. She told me about that, early in the evening. And that's what I remembered after I woke up from my dream. Remember that episode of Babylon 5 where Kosh is killed by the Shadows, and just before his death he appears in a dream to Sheridan as his father, to share some final words? Well, I couldn't help but think maybe Michael had just passed away, and the dream was sort of my way of visiting him before he went.
In the morning, my wife woke up before me (as she always does) to get another day care charge, a healthy infant boy named A.J., and then returned to bed with him while I shower. As I got dressed, she told me that we'd gotten a phone message at 10:30 the night before that Michael had passed away.
No psychic links there, then. I don't know exactly when my dream happened, but I'm sure it was after midnight.
Still, though, it makes you wonder.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam 54