Dream
Two nights ago I had a dream that bothered me throughout the day. It was a web of tiny scenes and I'm not sure what order they came in, or if that order is chronological. But yesterday, almost each new time I thought about the dream, I felt I was just on the verge of remembering some part, of holding on to a part of the dream I could recall an hour earlier. However hard I tried I never remembered. Whatever it was I failed to recall passed me like the front of a sign on a highway, and I could not backtrack to reread it. I had a visual memory of something passing, being in its place, but that was all.
What I remember now is that the dream was all about my brother. He was killed by suicide. I was here in my apartment when I found out. My sister drove here, and because her license is revoked I knew there was an emergency. Then I was sitting on the side of my bed. Kristen, my sister, was there at first but then I sent her away. I think she waited in the living room listening as I tore up my throat screaming. The kind of cry you only have a few times in your life. I remember the tight red feeling in my face and the way the empty, silent insides of my closet stared.
Later my family congregated around my brother's apartment. A large plastic jug of powdered protein had been emptied and filled with pills. We found this jug a quarter empty and someone told my mother the pills were diet pills, they were meant to help you lose weight quickly. Outside, not far from my brother's apartment, a sticky mass of vomit had hardened in the cold branches of a bush and the packed ground beneath it. Bits of the pills were visible.
We were panicked and not calm about it, but my family started trying to fit together the pieces of my brother's ended life. I watched as one sister argued that the vomit meant he changed his mind, he didn't want to die anymore. Then the other sister argued that it was all part of the same condition, the vomit was a purge after the binge of pills. When the issue of weight was concerned, or the suggestion of an eating disorder or self-image complex, we all grew silent.
Worst were the feelings of guilt and shame. My brother, in life, is a heavy man, has exceeded 300 pounds in the past. He does not deny this, and he has tried short diets but has never seemed overly concerned by his weight. We had all assumed that it was his choice, that he was okay with it. If we had known we might have been able to help.
When I was on the bed in my dream I felt so angry at him. In waking life I have this vague notion that the stagnant nature of my brother's life will eventually come to an end and he will do something with and to the world that he wants to do. I didn't put it in words, not even to myself, but I was furious and heartbroken that he had ended his life before he had done anything with it.
What I remember now is that the dream was all about my brother. He was killed by suicide. I was here in my apartment when I found out. My sister drove here, and because her license is revoked I knew there was an emergency. Then I was sitting on the side of my bed. Kristen, my sister, was there at first but then I sent her away. I think she waited in the living room listening as I tore up my throat screaming. The kind of cry you only have a few times in your life. I remember the tight red feeling in my face and the way the empty, silent insides of my closet stared.
Later my family congregated around my brother's apartment. A large plastic jug of powdered protein had been emptied and filled with pills. We found this jug a quarter empty and someone told my mother the pills were diet pills, they were meant to help you lose weight quickly. Outside, not far from my brother's apartment, a sticky mass of vomit had hardened in the cold branches of a bush and the packed ground beneath it. Bits of the pills were visible.
We were panicked and not calm about it, but my family started trying to fit together the pieces of my brother's ended life. I watched as one sister argued that the vomit meant he changed his mind, he didn't want to die anymore. Then the other sister argued that it was all part of the same condition, the vomit was a purge after the binge of pills. When the issue of weight was concerned, or the suggestion of an eating disorder or self-image complex, we all grew silent.
Worst were the feelings of guilt and shame. My brother, in life, is a heavy man, has exceeded 300 pounds in the past. He does not deny this, and he has tried short diets but has never seemed overly concerned by his weight. We had all assumed that it was his choice, that he was okay with it. If we had known we might have been able to help.
When I was on the bed in my dream I felt so angry at him. In waking life I have this vague notion that the stagnant nature of my brother's life will eventually come to an end and he will do something with and to the world that he wants to do. I didn't put it in words, not even to myself, but I was furious and heartbroken that he had ended his life before he had done anything with it.