“I dreamt you died,” my friend/co-worker said to me today.
“Come again? Wait…what? How did I die?”
“I can’t say,” she responded.
“You can’t tell me you dreamt I died then not tell me how I died. Was I decapitated?”
“No.”
“Was I raped?”
“No.”
“Then tell me!”
After a few seconds she paused and said it was a very bad man, he took you. And do you know what my next question was?
“Was he hot?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
She brought up a very good point that this would make an excellent blog post. Yes, I am very slowly coming out of my anonymous state at work. It only took 2 years.
This Isn’t the First Time
This isn’t the first time someone’s dreamt I died. Is this like a record to have 2 people dream I died? Am I that horrible of a person? The first time, it was my son when he was about 5. Yeah, my very own son dreamt I died. He came crying into my room. Like my friend, he didn’t want to tell me. According to his death plan for me, my death went as follows:
A bad man (there seems to be a pattern) enters our home and kills me.
Easy-peezy, lemon squeezy. The funny thing is, after consoling him for what seemed to be 20 minutes, he hopped off my lap and went downstairs. When I followed him a short time later, he was crying to my husband who was sitting on the sofa.
‘Awe, he’s all worked up again about his mama,’ I thought. Then I heard him say,
“I had a dream you died daddy.”
Wait a minute? I was supposed to die in this dream, not my husband. Ok, this is an absolutely ridiculous thing to think but honestly, it was the first thing that came to my head.
Do You Want to Know?
I’ll be real, I’m scared shitless to die. If someone told me I could live to be 200, I’d do it. If my consciousness could be uploaded to an AI, sign me the fuck up. I don’t want to die and have experienced on more than one occasion a panic attack just thinking about it.
Once on a flight to Paris, the cabin was completely silent and the lights dim. We were crossing the Atlantic in the middle of the night when I began to ponder that at any moment, another flight could just run right into us and that would be it. One second alive, the next, dead.
It’s not necessarily the fear of what’s next, it’s the fear that there isn’t a next. I can’t fathom not having some sort of consciousness. Does that make sense? My only ray of hope is that as I age, I’ll think differently and make peace with death. Because if I don’t, I am so fucked. Just put me in a padded room with a straight jacket cause I’m gonna need it.
So yeah, do you want to know? Are you scared? Do you not care? Has your religion or lack thereof, shaped your view of death?
P.S. This post went deeper than I like to go so tomorrow we will be discussing wine, sex and anything else to keep us from actually thinking about horrible things.
P.S.S. Based on my friend’s and son’s dream, I will have to steer clear of all non-male relatives going forward. Consider it an act of self-preservation. Gentlemen, please don’t take it personally.
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