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| The only grandparent I never knew, Essie Bennett Hart. After reading my account below, my Aunt Betty, Essie's youngest child, gave me this black and white image. She told me the coat she is wearing in the photo was her favorite. And was baby blue in color. |
The Party
I don’t really know if it is accurate to call this a dream or to even use this word at the outset. Perhaps it will preclude more precise understanding. But, for lack of a better word I’m going to call it a dream. Sadly, that word can’t come close to describing what this really was.
The part of me with great respect and awe for Southeast Asia would like to call it a meditative state or a transcendental experience. But I really don’t know much about these states of “being.” The intellectual part of me would like to analyze the shared banquet imagery in most of the world’s religions and offer interpretation of the metaphors. But that would take away from the actual experience. It wouldn’t allow for the way this “dream” made me feel, for the intense serenity that washed over me when I woke. I would like to use the word, joy, but I can’t because there was a sense that “of course” this happens. What else would you have possibly thought, Kathy? I have played with different ways to describe my feelings about this occurrence, but I can’t come up with anything accurate. I can only approximate: thankful that I was able to experience this, peaceful that I had been gifted with this view, and humbled that I had been allowed to feel this banquet.
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When I entered the room, I seemed to be an intruder as the guests were engrossed in the meal before them and in the conversation they shared. At first I felt this was my dad’s funeral luncheon, but nothing seemed right. It wasn’t the church basement, but it did seem to be a spiritual hall. And there was a sense of natural, muted gaiety. The lights were so dim that I couldn’t always make out the guests or what they were eating. Part of me wondered why my sister had turned the lights down so at the luncheon. There wasn’t candlelight or any kind of artificial light and it wasn’t a fog. It was simply a quiet dim. The word quiet isn’t quite right either as I was aware there was talk and sharing.
Somewhere deep inside me, I felt a profound connection to the people in this room, but I couldn’t name them, that is until I saw my grandmother, Myrtle, and relative, Inez. Even now as I write, I can’t describe them or explain why I identified them as Myrtle and Inez, for they weren’t any age in particular. My grandmother didn’t look like her high school yearbook picture that sits on my credenza. Inez didn’t look like the matron of honor in my grandmother’s wedding photo. But neither looked like the photos of later years, standing next to my dad at the Hall of Fame dinner or posing at camp dinners together. They were neither young nor old. They were just Myrtle and Inez. As I had been working on family genealogy, a feeling of great excitement jabbed through me. I tried to get Inez’s attention. What an opportunity to ask her the name of her great grandmother. But she ignored me. She just kept chatting away and laughing with my grandmother. I persisted. But there was no acknowledgement of my presence. It was then I was aware no one in the room would speak to me. I felt they were cognizant of me, floating around them, not just above, but below, next to, and around them. The players simply went about their business. I looked at Myrtle and Inez’s plate as I wanted to see if this meal matched what my sister had chosen to serve at my dad’s funeral luncheon. See, I was still thinking these people were gathered for my dad, yet nothing about the luncheon seemed to be the way we had planned for his funeral. And where was my sister? I looked back around at the guests. Yes, they seemed familiar. I knew them all but yet couldn’t name most of them. They weren’t the people who had gathered in the First United Methodist Church that Friday night after his service.
Suddenly I heard a pounding at the hitherto unnoticed immense glass doors. I think it is necessary to point out they were glass. Anyone looking could see through them, if they wanted. My sister was knocking on the door. I motioned to her to come in but she refused, pointing at her blue jeans. “I can’t come to the party. I’m not dressed right.” I was confused as I knew it didn’t matter what anyone wore. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of what these people were wearing. And not because I couldn’t see it, but because it just didn’t seem to be important. For someone who writes down what she wears to work every day, that seemed a strange feeling. But, at this gathering, the clothes didn’t matter. That is all except for a woman in a soft blue coat. I could make out her coat’s hue of blue among the other nondescript or unremembered garments. I was aware that she was the only one in the room who had a deep desire that I see her. No, the verb, see, is not correct. I think this woman wanted me to feel her deep love. For everyone else in the room, that feeling was somehow taken for granted.
And then I felt him. My dad. Now I was confounded. Why was he at his own funeral? But, he seemed to belong here and all seemed to be celebrating him. Now, when I write reminiscing and told here, I don’t mean that I heard his voice with my ears. That’s not it at all. I mean I felt it. Dad was reminiscing, pointing his finger at me, reminding me of the time his watch had been found in Lake Superior, many years after he had lost it on the beach, in that narrow muddy place where sand gives way to water. When the watch was found, everyone was amazed. The astonishment grew when, after being wound again, the watch worked. Gordon Lightfoot’s words, “Lake Superior, it’s said, never gives up her dead” did not apply to that watch. The parts to the Timex still ticked after all those seasons enshrouded deep within the mud of the Lake that supposedly kept her dead buried. He told me to think of his watch. It seemed so important to him; important that I remember the watch that had ticked, despite its years encased in mud.
The celebration continued. The room had become so large that it ceased to be a room. The aura was a babbling brook of sharing and contentment. There was a natural feeling of blissful connectedness here.
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This was a dream from which I didn’t want to wake. I didn’t want to see the bright sunlight angling for my attention from behind the blinds. I didn’t want to hear the cheery sounds of my house, the tick of the dog’s nails as they clicked in ecstatic play. And even though my daily life is joyful, I wanted to remain here, in the weave of harmonious union. I was aware of my internal fight to stay at the party. I looked around in anticipation. Could one of the guests keep me here? But no one reached out to do so or even to bid me good-bye. Even my dad seemed to smile a “see you later” look as he bent over the woman in the blue coat.
I was fully awake.
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Or was I?
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What is awake?
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Happy Birthday, Dad!
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