Whatever loss might really mean
I've always wondered how I would feel if a member of my immediate family - my mother, my father or my sister - died.
Most people probably wouldn't wonder. But I never felt much of anything when various members of my extended family died. I very rarely "miss" anyone - and I'm still not entirely certain I experience that emotion the same way that others do. I've never felt "homesick" as the dictionary defines it. I've had it implied more than once - including by one head doc - that I'm abnormally emotionless and robotic.
So I had to wonder. But I think I've finally gotten one-third of my answer.
I crawled into bed Sunday morning a few hours before I needed to get up for work.
And I had the most horrible dream.
I don't entirely recall what led up to this point of the dream, but I was sitting out in the living room...reading a book, maybe. The house I was in was not my current one: I think it was some sort of bizarre cross between the bungalow my family rented in Saskatoon when I was between the ages of 5 and 9, and one of the victim's houses from Criminal Minds.
Either that, or it was an entirely made-up house. But my dreams don't tend to feature those.
From the bedroom where my mother was resting, I heard her voice call, "Dan, come here."
"Why?" I demanded, irritated with the interruption to whatever I was doing.
"Just come here, please."
"Why?"
Unnaturally calm. "Because I'm having a heart attack."
Because I'm having a heart attack.
From there, the film of the dream disintegrated in my panic, blurring into streaks and ribbons of color and jagged frames jumping out of sync with a painfully silent soundtrack. I ran to her room and found her lying on her bed, grasping her chest with one hand. How she knew it was a heart attack, I didn't bother to ask; I trusted that she knew. I feared how much I trusted it, feared the eternally calm, knowing expression on her face.
"My cell phone's on the dresser," she said.
The details of the dresser jumped wildly in front of my eyes, refusing to resolve themselves into anything particularly coherent. I realized that if I didn't calm down for just a moment to locate the phone, I would waste even more valuable time, but the scene continued to jump, and it took me ages to determine the phone didn't actually seem to be on the dresser at all. And come to think of it, I wouldn't have known how to turn on or use my mother's phone.
I heard an odd sound, and whirled toward the bed in time to catch my mother flailing slightly and mumbling noises which were clearly intended to be words, but which were not discernible.
[In reality, this didn't look like a heart attack - it looked more like the way strokes have been portrayed on House - but the medical details of this are largely inconsequential.]
I reached her, and pulled her upright from beneath the shoulders. "Mom?"
She just mumbled and slurred. I couldn't tell if she'd made eye contact with me for a moment, or not. I couldn't tell if she recognized me, knew me. She certainly couldn't help me save her. I was on my own.
I jumped up again and went looking for one of our other phones, one of the cordless handsets. Yet somehow, I knew I wouldn't find either one. Or that if I did, they would be broken. Or that if I ran next door, the neighbours would be out. Or wouldn't have a phone. Because this is a dream didn't consciously surface, but my mind recognized the nightmare logic of the dreamscape.
My search paused when I felt something hard - several hard somethings - crunching around in my mouth. Startled, I spat them into my palm. For several long moments, I couldn't tell what the milky, misshapen objects in my hand were. Then it clicked. Teeth. My teeth.
With something drawing tight in my chest, I turned towards my mother's full-length mirror: the one that's always hung on the wall of my parent's bedroom. I opened my my mouth.
I was missing teeth. The several-thousand-dollar smile that my parents forked out for had turned from passable into a ghoulish jack-o'-lantern grin, teeth cocked at bizarre angles. I was back in braces for some reason, but they were doing no job of holding my teeth in my mouth. As I watched, tooth after tooth loosened from my gum line and dropped out into my waiting, outstretched hand. My braces stretched across vacated spaces; loose brackets spun in space like empty coathangers hanging in some forgotten closet.
No.
And then my alarm went off. Time to get up and go to work.
Good times.
Most people probably wouldn't wonder. But I never felt much of anything when various members of my extended family died. I very rarely "miss" anyone - and I'm still not entirely certain I experience that emotion the same way that others do. I've never felt "homesick" as the dictionary defines it. I've had it implied more than once - including by one head doc - that I'm abnormally emotionless and robotic.
So I had to wonder. But I think I've finally gotten one-third of my answer.
I crawled into bed Sunday morning a few hours before I needed to get up for work.
And I had the most horrible dream.
I don't entirely recall what led up to this point of the dream, but I was sitting out in the living room...reading a book, maybe. The house I was in was not my current one: I think it was some sort of bizarre cross between the bungalow my family rented in Saskatoon when I was between the ages of 5 and 9, and one of the victim's houses from Criminal Minds.
Either that, or it was an entirely made-up house. But my dreams don't tend to feature those.
From the bedroom where my mother was resting, I heard her voice call, "Dan, come here."
"Why?" I demanded, irritated with the interruption to whatever I was doing.
"Just come here, please."
"Why?"
Unnaturally calm. "Because I'm having a heart attack."
Because I'm having a heart attack.
From there, the film of the dream disintegrated in my panic, blurring into streaks and ribbons of color and jagged frames jumping out of sync with a painfully silent soundtrack. I ran to her room and found her lying on her bed, grasping her chest with one hand. How she knew it was a heart attack, I didn't bother to ask; I trusted that she knew. I feared how much I trusted it, feared the eternally calm, knowing expression on her face.
"My cell phone's on the dresser," she said.
The details of the dresser jumped wildly in front of my eyes, refusing to resolve themselves into anything particularly coherent. I realized that if I didn't calm down for just a moment to locate the phone, I would waste even more valuable time, but the scene continued to jump, and it took me ages to determine the phone didn't actually seem to be on the dresser at all. And come to think of it, I wouldn't have known how to turn on or use my mother's phone.
I heard an odd sound, and whirled toward the bed in time to catch my mother flailing slightly and mumbling noises which were clearly intended to be words, but which were not discernible.
[In reality, this didn't look like a heart attack - it looked more like the way strokes have been portrayed on House - but the medical details of this are largely inconsequential.]
I reached her, and pulled her upright from beneath the shoulders. "Mom?"
She just mumbled and slurred. I couldn't tell if she'd made eye contact with me for a moment, or not. I couldn't tell if she recognized me, knew me. She certainly couldn't help me save her. I was on my own.
I jumped up again and went looking for one of our other phones, one of the cordless handsets. Yet somehow, I knew I wouldn't find either one. Or that if I did, they would be broken. Or that if I ran next door, the neighbours would be out. Or wouldn't have a phone. Because this is a dream didn't consciously surface, but my mind recognized the nightmare logic of the dreamscape.
My search paused when I felt something hard - several hard somethings - crunching around in my mouth. Startled, I spat them into my palm. For several long moments, I couldn't tell what the milky, misshapen objects in my hand were. Then it clicked. Teeth. My teeth.
With something drawing tight in my chest, I turned towards my mother's full-length mirror: the one that's always hung on the wall of my parent's bedroom. I opened my my mouth.
I was missing teeth. The several-thousand-dollar smile that my parents forked out for had turned from passable into a ghoulish jack-o'-lantern grin, teeth cocked at bizarre angles. I was back in braces for some reason, but they were doing no job of holding my teeth in my mouth. As I watched, tooth after tooth loosened from my gum line and dropped out into my waiting, outstretched hand. My braces stretched across vacated spaces; loose brackets spun in space like empty coathangers hanging in some forgotten closet.
No.
And then my alarm went off. Time to get up and go to work.
Good times.