I Dream of Hospice

Last night I dreamt about dying. This long drawn out process that never actually completed. Days of weeks of it.

During an upswing, I ordered some Indian food from a counter. The owner–a man I’ve met a few times in New York City–said I had beautiful eyes and presented a selection of t-shirts, asking if I wanted to buy one. I told him, “no, I’m dying.” Then added, “do you have a smaller size?”

He said they did not. I’d have drowned in the soft cotton of one of those shirts. It would have draped to my knees. Didn’t matter if it was red, or pink, or blue..

“No thank you, then,” I said. And took my food.

I laid in bed on hospice, dying of old-age related somethings at 37. At one point I remember looking in the mirror under a dim light. I saw the wrinkles in my forehead and felt my stomach sink, but then I relaxed my worried face and they went away. Mostly, anyway.. but for faint lines that never used to be there. Faint lines that I could barely see under the dim light reflected in the cloudy mirror.

I felt tired. The kind of tired that makes its way into every cell of your body; the kind I’ve only ever really felt while microdosing mushrooms. Like it would be a crime to move, like I wasn’t meant to. I expected death to take me any day now, any day. But I’d just wake up again, just to spend more time in bed.

“Are you going to sing,” she asked me. I was a little boy, or perhaps just watching a little boy, and I or he was also dying. She asked me and I answered,

“No,”

Then in the very next scene the boy played his guitar at the fair and sang in such a delicate voice that I’m smiling remembering it. Frail, beautiful creature. Short, sweet song. Through that broad smile, bobbing a wispy tuft of red hair atop his head, playing his guitar with skeletal fingers. He would be dead soon. I felt bad for the pretty woman who hadn’t wanted to miss him singing, but had because he changed his mind.

Another time, I tried to use the restroom.

The first one was disgusting. Some pepto-bismol-colored chunk of flesh on the toilet seat. Filth on the floor and the walls. I turned around and walked out.

The second one seemed better. But it was not better. I stepped inside and after a few seconds my foot began to feel wet from the flooding. Disgusting. I wrinkled my face and peered at the toilet bowl. The water level nearly overflowed, and it was a faint yellow color, with toilet paper spread out as if it were a lovely bit of vegetation in a coral reef.

I felt indignant, now. I peered into the last available restroom and looked at the floor before I stepped inside. Flooded. Dirty.

“Excuse me,” I said weakly. The man turned around, and I recognized him. He’s the systems administrator at my work. “Are you someone who can clean the toilets?” He stared back at me, looking happy to assist but not moving or saying anything. I waited.

A businesswoman marched down the hallway then, looking perfect and expensive in her black skirt suit. She walked like I should be scared of her, but everything else said warmth. She smiled at me and asked,

“What’s the problem?”

“The bathrooms,” I said, “you probably haven’t seen them, I think you have a different one, but they’re all unusable. Just..” I paused for a long time, trying to think of a word that didn’t sound violent. “not very clean.”

I felt ashamed, talking to her. Maybe it was the suit. A year ago I awkwardly shook a college kid’s hand and congratulated him for winning a competition, because he was dressed so professionally. I lost that competition wearing jeans, because my presentation was much worse. I still cringe thinking about it.

But it wasn’t just the suit. It was how attractive she was. When I see an attractive woman I can’t look away fast enough. Like I’ll be caught and strung up. But it’s not just the internalized homophobia, it’s also an inferiority complex. It’s a gross lack of confidence. It’s a hierarchy in my own mind. My skin burns with it and I begin to sweat. My muscles tense. I’ve started to realize in my own life that it’s actually an important bit of self care, to make sure that I like how I look when I go out in public. It gives me the confidence to exist, which is a feeling I’m not used to. It isn’t shallow. It’s necessary.

I apologize, I’m not sure what she did end up doing about the bathrooms. I think I found one to use.

Back in bed, there were moments that I felt were the end. I’d slowly close my eyes and let my head sink impossibly deeper into the pillow. I’d loose all my muscles and sink, sink, sink.. but nothing changed. They held me up at the door. I never went anywhere.

Once, I got a surge of energy. “This is it!” I thought, shooting up from the bed. I remembered old William Stoner; I remembered the pamphlets I’d read when I began volunteering at the hospice company. We get a last hurrah after our body decides it’s giving up. I like to imagine the discussion in the control room, and the tearful nod that the operator gives to the remaining resources before they rush out of the door at at once, no longer trying to conserve energy.

“Enjoy the last of it.” Perhaps one of my old friends from Inside Out. I’m crying, just thinking about it. The beautiful way that life sometimes works. The way that I know that my body loves me, and is always trying its best. Just, “enjoy the last of it, old friend.”

Anyway I shot up, smiling. “Finally!” Though it felt sad, too. I rushed to visit my best friend in my last moments.

“This is it,” I told her. I’m crying now, but I wasn’t crying in my dream. And she was the only person I wanted to see. In real life as well, she’s the only person I would want to see.

But then my parents were there, goading me on about how I was feeling better. Enough of this “I’m dying” nonsense, you see. “So wonderful you’re up and about,” and the like.

I yelled at my dad. I screamed at him. And then I walked away. He stayed, chatting with my brother, while my mother followed me.

“You can’t say that to him,” she said. “He’ll feel guilty.”

“He SHOULD feel guilty.”

“Your father loves you.”

“He doesn’t love me! He just wanted to mold me. You know when I first took the personality test it said I was an INTJ? But I’m an INFP! Dad’s an INTJ! He should feel guilty!”

I reached a breaking point two years ago when I got divorced. My dad said to me, “I didn’t consider it a real marriage anyway. You know what my dream has always been for you two?” he had tears in his eyes. He really meant this. “That you could live next door to each other and have husbands and families of your own.”

The bridge I’d been trying to build for years suddenly had nothing holding it up. The gorge had become a chasm, and I watched sticks falling through the air towards a bottom I couldn’t see. Then I glanced up and saw my dad, small as an ant. His words could barely reach me now.

After yelling about my father, I woke up. Alive.