Just a dream I had one time

I dreamt I set off a bomb at school. Nobody was there.  I just drove an old truck up parked it, got out, and it exploded.  I think I just didn’t want to teach anymore. 

I must have gotten caught or killed because I ended up back at the same place except now it was a prison.  I’m not sure now if I was alive or dead, but I think I was dead.  But it was a prison too.  And Kirk and Brian and maybe all of my cousins were there because after I did what I did, they tried to help me. And then got caught.

My family, mom and auntmom, came to visit, and some men stopped them outside, said you can’t go inside with that, and a bag of candy and gum and Kracker Jack toys fell to the ground.  I knelt down and was trying to pick things up on the other side of the fence, one by one, and as I did so I kept asking, “Can we touch?  Can we hug?”  The answer was no, and I began sobbing loudly.

And then Granny and JoJo were sitting on a bench nearby.  They had come to visit too.  And when I looked at Mom and Auntmom to ask why they were both able to be there, I understood that they had both died.  Again, I began sobbing, asking what happened to JoJo?

She had fallen down and her head hit a metal door stop.  By the time somebody came along to help her up, to pull her off of it,it was too late.  This was the most sorrowful thing I had ever heard, her dying alone, helpless, and I could not stop crying. 

But she seemed content, and then I understood that when people die they stay with us for a long while to help us get used to the idea.  They come and go in our dreams and in our spaces, like Granny Connelly did for a long time after she died.  The closer you were, the longer they stay on.  But eventually, you are used to the idea, and they are ready to move on.  It’s like when someone graduates from high school and is ready to go to college.  At first they come home all the time, for them as much as for those left behind.  But eventually, they move on because they have a new life.  They have graduated this world, and we are okay because they helped us let go.

And then, I think Mom got put in prison and maybe Auntmom too for trying to get me out.  So we were all there. The wardens still didn’t want us to hug.  But it was a much nicer place with us all there picking up Kracker Jacks together.