Buried in Back Bay ©2012 Mick Circeo
White Coffee, Communicating With the Dead (Washington DC, Crazy Period)
I’ve got to get out of bed today.
I wake up each morning disgusted with myself. Maybe for what I did the day before, or was unable to do. People who don’t live with OCD don’t understand it. Yes, maybe they can begin to get a little of it via observation, but they really don’t understand it.
OCD is a sickness and it’s not a sickness; it’s more of a realization of the way that things must work if the world is going to make any sense. If it’s going to fit together properly. You’re not sitting around looking at making sure “everything is even” — yes, you do that anyway. That piece is incidental to the bigger picture of Order in the Universe. Understand the World, as we say at GEO-INT.
I live with regret. What could I have done better that I didn’t do? What personal failing has caused me to be in the situation in which I currently find myself? Find myself? Am I not here because of something or a series of events that I myself caused? Anything bad that has ever happened to me has rarely been anyone’s fault but my own. I said rarely.
You make all the labels face the same way, and alphabetical — doesn’t that just make good sense? All furniture is perpendicular with the floorboards, and who doesn’t do that. I’m not talking about feng shui — this has little to do with ch’i, at least as I understand ch’i.
* * *
(Washington DC, Current Day)
After Rose disappeared, I would catch flashes — brilliant flashes — in the corners of my eyes. It would be her. Or someone I thought was her. Maybe it was at the house. Sometimes it was on the street. Even the dog saw her. Maybe she was and inch taller or two inches shorter, or something was out of place. Something that Rose would’ve done differently. If we were on the sidewalk, the dog stared her down for the longest time, until the she turned a corner or went into a store. I’d stare with him. Frozen. Then I’d look down at him, look up, and she’d be gone. That is what caused me to think she was real. Or maybe that she herself was a jumper. (Surely she’d have told me that?)
You hear stories about people appearing at the foot of your bed, and you think the stories are bullshit until people start appearing to you. At the foot of your bed. Yes I don’t mean to diminish their lovely souls in any way by saying it, but the girls — my twins — did come to me after the wreck, and it did happen in dreams. And it did stop.
The thing about communicating with the dead is that — for a short time after they disappear — and I’m not talking about pulling “spirits from the vasty deep” like Glendower — maybe that works in a Shakespeare play. It doesn’t happen in real life. But my daughters would visit me. In my dreams, I mean. This happens. They would tell me that they’re okay, and that I would be okay too. For a short time after, I would get these visits or I would hear their voices, their comforting voices. You would think it would be startling, but it’s not. It is strangely and oddly comforting.
Sometimes I’d dream about the girls as they were when they were younger, sometimes when they could barely talk, back when they wanted their daddy to ”just hold" them. And then I’d wake up.
With Rose it was different. The visits, the glimpses, the flashes, they didn’t stop. The dreams. We’d be together, and it wasn’t an image of her as they rolled her into the ER that night; this was as she was in life. That’s why they say you shouldn’t look at a loved one in bad condition or even in death — because that is how you will remember them. And that’s how I knew that Rose was not dead. Or maybe that is why I never felt comfortable that she had really died that night.
You might say to yourself No. I don’t communicate with the dead, and why would I want to?
Well if you’ve lost someone close to you, there might be things left unsaid — maybe there are I love yous to be exchanged — or apologies to be tendered or just silent moments to be shared. Maybe you wanted your grandmother to know your children, and she passed before you had children. Maybe you performed CPR on your father, and you couldn’t save him. But even if all bases have been covered, there is still that urge, that yearning, to have more time together. Especially if they’ve been taken from you and you cannot even say goodbye to a body, there is that desire. And you begin to wonder what really happened.
When a personal tragedy strikes, you’re distraught. Other people take over. I had to just let that happen. I was in no shape or position to handle funerals and burials and services and guests. That is all done for you, and if you’re in a daze or a haze, you let it happen. There’s no time or room for clear thinking and working out patterns. There’s just sadness and heaviness in your chest and a sense that your world is over. Or if it’s got to go on, that it will all be different from now on.
I was so out of it then. There was no clear memory of the funerals. Sometimes I think that they didn’t really happen. Sometimes I think that Rose and the girls are still alive.
Some days you wake up, your mind is blank. Sometimes it’s morning, but most of the time you look around for a clock to see what time it is, what day, year it is. You start thinking about how many songs start with “woke up this morning” — whose wine, what wine, where the hell did I dine. So on. Is everyone like this, or is it just me. Why does it have to be everyone or me? Why can’t it just be a handful of people, or a hundred or a thousand people — doesn’t have to be an “everyone or me” scenario, right.
You wash your face and hands — if you can get up — the back of your neck. Get that cat butter — those sleepies, as she used to call them — out of your eyes, that oily film off your forehead, those germs off your hands. Or you want to.
Flat on my back, cant get up. If I put pressure just behind my right ear, it somehow blocks the pain and I can move. Nexium for the stomach acids. Naproxen, Mepergan for the pain. I don't want the Mepergan because I need to be sharp, and there's always the chance I will throw up if I eat that stuff. The Nexium I can take — no side effects. Good for the stomach.
Get that pillow just right under my neck. Surprising how the pain leaves with just that focused pressure in that one place. Okay, this is good. I can lay on my right side. I'm fine if I do that.
“Come on sweetie, you need your meds. Doctor's orders.”
“But they're making me sick. I’m so ripshit with this. I'm gonna vomit. I feel like I’m gonna vomit.” Am I dreaming this? It feels real but I know it’s a dream. Logic tells me it’s a dream. But my eyes are watery — you don’t get watery eyes in a dream. I feel wide awake. I can see her, touch her, hold her. This is real. You don't have to take a shit in your dreams, and I have to get up now, just like I do very morning. This is real. Fuck. Body position just before you hit that cold toilet seat. Like I’m being stabbed in the back of the neck. I’m wincing? I don’t wince. I don’t feel pain like most people. I don’t feel it at all. But I can’t lift my arms. Explain that.
* * *
(Washington DC, Crazy Period)
She's there. My Rock is there to dose me. My pills and a nice white coffee. Rose had to get up 20 minutes ago to make this for me. Sweet. She is so sweet. The sweetest. And I am getting wrinkles on my face with all these pillows, lying here like some paraplegic or something. 6:49AM. I've got work to do. Maybe I can get up for good by noon. I cannot be incapacitated by something so insignificant. I am stronger than that. I am better than that.
And yet here I am, half-light getting past the curtains covering the French windows. Pictures hanging on white concrete walls. Pictures I took and framed and hung myself. I clearly remember doing that. Half my leftover scotch on the nightstand from last night. Behind me. I can smell it.
This cannot be a dream, and yet she is here. And if I try to raise up from this position, nothing happens. My arms seem to work, and I have this clear cognitive thought, but I am otherwise paralyzed. No I’m not. I can post up on my elbow. I can turn my head. Just a little, but I can turn my head. God. Shit that hurts. This can't be real. What if it's real? Head weighs a frigging ton. Neck can’t support it.
Bedroom door is ajar, just slightly. I can see past the doorway into the hall. Shadows. Conversations. My hearing is hot and cold these days — I hear some things very sharply. Other things not, they’re dull noises. Seems like I pick up all the sounds I don't need — background noise, dog snoring in the middle of the night. But I need to hear this conversation. I only get voices. No whole words. It's not an argument, just concerned voices. It's not the TV — I recognize these people. Are they talking about me?
I'll try to get up. I can't go out there though — if they're talking about me, they're just going to stop once they see me. I need to hear this. I just need to get closer to the door. Gently, don't make a sound. The carpet helps. Goddamn, you bend over, you can’t get back up. Just stay down, get to the door.
“No, he's not. He's not getting better. If anything, he's getting worse.”
I don’t hear anyone else.
“No.” It’s her again. “I'm not gonna do that. I could never do that. That's not right. I can't even think about that right now. No. Don't even bring that up. We're not going there.” She's pausing now. Silence. Listening. “I know. I know what you’re saying, and part of me agrees with that. But I said no. Let's talk later. Okay. Okay. Okay. Love you.”
That was a “love you” like she was talking to her sister. Not a “love you” like it was another man. She wasn’t like that. Her I could trust. Crawl back to bed. Don’t let her hear you.
The white coffee was good – she had talent. Life is too short to drink bad coffee.
“Sweetie, you just keep doing what the doctors are telling you, and things are going to work out.” She would always say that. She was usually right about everything. She was not right about this. She was my warm cotton coat. She shows up like this every now and again, and it hurts my heart.


Recent Comments