(Continued from October 2021)
Like I said earlier, dreams have a funny way of being real when someone dies.
I always wished to spend more time with Orpheus, ever since we met. He confessed to feeling the same and even tried to convince me to move to Canada a few times. It’s a shame that it took him dying for us to finally be together. Well, sort of.
Now that he’s dead, he visits me all the time, mostly in dreams. After a few months of panic, I think he figured out taking form in my dreams is the sanest and least painful way to communicate with me.
Living Orpheus loved it when I told him about being in my dreams. He always wanted to know what happened in them. These days, when Dead Orpheus shows up in my dreamscapes, I like to think he also watches me write them down so as to enjoy my interpretation since he can’t ask for me to tell him the details anymore.
Like last week, I know he peeked over my shoulder as I wrote about his most recent dream appearance. The hair stood on my arms and my neck. My ears tingled as I scribbled out the remaining impressions. It was him. He was there.
In the dream, he somehow perched himself on the nightstand near my bed and lovingly studied every part of my body as I slept. His body was too big to be positioned on the small bed stand, but that’s what he did, and it seemed completely normal. I felt him yearning to be closer to me, to touch my soft skin and feel the warmth between us. However, we had a problem: He had no body. When his ghost eyes scanned me from the bedside table, I gained awareness of his presence. I rolled toward his spirit that resembled him in the flesh, tricking me into believing the moment was real and that I was engaging with Living Orpheus. Little did I know, it was Dead Orpheus who smiled at me and caressed my head and cheeks. His tender longing shocked me awake within the dream. I matched his desire for intimacy and connection and then reached out for him to join me in my cozy bed. As I almost touched his hand, I remembered he was dead and that ghosts don’t have flesh or hands. I then woke up in real life, sad and alone, wrapped in blankets on my bed. I was also grateful Orpheus came to me and stayed with me long enough for me to know he was actually present. I sobbed through the deepest anguish until I gave way to the joy of knowing his love was so strong that it floated out of Hades and into my bedroom.
As I was packing old notebooks in my room, a tiny dream diary fell out of the box and hid under my bed. I opened it this morning to find dreams about Orpheus from when he was alive. All of them were marked with little neon flags so I could look back on them later. I think it’s a sign to share them here, so I will.
In the first dream, I was riding Orpheus, and both of us were in sexual ecstasy. He begged me to stay with him in Canada, and I surrendered to his request without hesitation. A lawnmower woke me up, but I was able to fall back asleep, and Orpheus returned to my dreams. This time, he emphatically practiced presenting his thesis to me, which had something to do with the psychology of celestial bioluminescent squids, similar to the firefly squid. The difference was that these squids lived not only in the Western Pacific Ocean but also in space. An academic program finally accepted Orpheus’s concept, so he was in a delightful mood. As he told me about the squids from outer space and how they communicate, I saw a transcription of his research roll in the air between us, like film credits. Bright blue squids swam around us and through the scrolling words. Then, I awoke.
A month later, I had a semi-bad dream. I was in an office break room that had a bed in it. Orpheus arrived, aloof and distant. He was looking for someone else, not me. I drove to an abandoned boat ramp. The brakes on my car died, and I drove right into the freezing river. I miraculously got out alive and fine. Orpheus showed up again; this time, he was concerned about my safety.
That fall, I dreamed that Psychic TV played a show in Orlando at a park near a river. Annoying people were hostage-talking me in the bathroom. They wouldn’t shut up, and they wouldn’t let me leave. I could feel Orpheus on the other side of the river where the band was playing, so I promptly left the idiots to blab amongst themselves. I needed to know that he was really there, that I wasn’t just making it up, that I could sense his nearby presence. I crossed the river to find him. My plan was to ignore him once I found him, which is not anything I’d want to do in real life. He sat at a table with a little girl. His face was greyish and sunken in, and he was thinner than I ever saw him. Music memorabilia covered the table. "Come sit with me," he said to me. "Look at all of this stuff I have to get signed." This was odd because he wasn’t particularly a fan of PTV, but he used to own a record store. I followed Orpheus up a flight of stairs, and the little girl trailed behind us. She spat pink liquid into a small glass. I fetched her crackers and a glass of water from a bartender, who asked if I was Joan from last night as if Joan had done something terrible at the bar that needed to be punished. I showed him my ID, and he backed down. Orpheus and I conversed more, and then I woke up crying because I missed him so much.
I have no idea what any of this means, not really. Although, it seems a bit prophetic that Orpheus showed up as ill in that last dream I mentioned. It’s almost like part of me knew he was going to die in the near future. And yet, in the dream where I drove into the river, it’s almost as if his inattention drove me away, but his presence saved my life. In reality, his presence very much did because he showed me how to love unconditionally, and that has saved me from much turmoil. I’ve no profound commentary on the glowing space squids, but I do wish they were real. As real as it felt when Dead Orpheus watched me sleep.
