The first part of the dream is disjointed and fractured. I have memories of a concert and public transport. There is Belle getting dropped in front of a train platform and stepped on. There’s flashes of color and sound but no clear vision.
I am talking to a man who seems like my father. Not MY father because he’s dead and not my other father because this man is sober. But this man is dream me’s father. And we are in a kitchen that I don’t know, like one from a fancy person’s house in a movie. Not a kitchen I deserve to be in. His mother is dying and he is telling someone “and she came into this world on April (I can’t quite catch the date) a hundred years ago today and she plans on exiting the same way.” I interrupt him because wait, why didn’t she tell me goodbye? How could she go to die and not let me say goodbye to her? How could she leave me? I run to the bedroom that she’s evidently sequestered herself in to die. It is in my actual parents’ bedroom when I was growing up.
Nana is sitting in the bed, chipper as a lark, bright eyed and happy. “Why are you doing this? You’re not dying. Why are you leaving me?” I ask her. She’s bouncing around the room with vigor, making me a cup of tea and settling into the covers with a plate of cookies like she always enjoyed. She’s waving aside my questions and saying “I told you I wasn’t going to be around forever. Now is my time to go. I’m tired.” I glance at her legs outside of the covers and see that she has hair on her legs. Dream me knows she can’t be dying because old people have no hair left on their legs, just thin skin and blue veins. “Nana, please don’t go.” At this point I’m crying. And I can feel myself waking up. I might be groaning in real life, trying desperately not to awaken before she’s done talking. We need more time together. I’m so focused on not waking up that I miss what she says. “Wait, what?” “You were what me and Papa needed. Charming from the moment we met you, Belle of the ball at the tiny age of four. And strong to boot. I think the knights are here to escort me home.”
I sense the energy shift around me but I am focusing so hard on her face, with the white hair perfectly curled around her face, and her cookies in her lap, that I am clenching my teeth tightly together.
“Please don’t go.”
I look back at the gray and reflective dresser and see the dark shadows coming for her.
I wake up crying.
