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Blogs by Patrick Sills
Odd Dreams 7/21/2005 9:05:48 AM
Dreams, especially odd ones, can become good ideas for stories. On Sunday, April 10, 2005, around 10:00 AM, I was preparing to take a trip to the hardware store to buy plastic sheets to lay down in the master bedroom that my wife and a friend were painting when the telephone rang. I picked it up and the person on the other end was a neighbor who lived across the street from the house where I grew up. Gerald Ford was probably in office the last time I talked to this person, so I knew something was wrong. She was quick and to the point. My mother, 75 years old and diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes some fifteen years earlier, had passed away about an hour before the call. Her blood sugar had dropped to such a low level that all of her vital organs shut down, causing cardiac arrest. My father couldn't make the call. Just a few months before, he had undergone major surgery to remove a cancerous larnx, pharnx, and a portion of his tongue. He was just learning to master his electro-larnx, a device I'm certain most people are familiar with. It resembles a small microphone, and is placed against the neck. The vibration of speech is amplified, and although it resembles the sound of a robot in some cheesy science-fiction movie from fifty years ago, the user is at least able to "talk" to others. However, the device he has doesn't work well on the telephone, and this was the reason the neighbor called me.
It is probably normal for someone who has just lost a parent to dream about the person. In a typical dream the person is alive and healthy, and perhaps younger. In my dream that I experienced shortly after her death, she looked the same as she had the last time I saw her, which had been only a few weeks before she died. We were sitting across the kitchen table from each other, drinking coffee. I said to her, "Mom, I'm really sorry that you died." She replied, "Yeah, I am, too, but that's the way it goes. I just couldn't take it anymore; the aches, the pains, not being able to get around, you know." This was all I could recall of the dream, but it made me wonder if, somehow, she was communicating with me from beyond. I will never know the absolute answer to that question. I suppose most experts educated in the interpretation of dreams, such as psychologists or psychiatrists, would say that I was merely having subconscious thoughts of my mother, and quite frankly, this makes perfect sense. However, it is far more exciting to imagine the alternative. I'm certain that this plot has been used over and over again, and probably for centuries, by story writers. Nevertheless, I will not forget this experience and I'm straining my thought processes in an attempt to concoct a fresh approach. On many occasions, I will have dreams that involve very minor things that I may have thought about during the day. As an example, I may eat a bowl of ice cream too fast and get that dreaded headache caused by drastic temperature changes on the palate that lasts for fifteen seconds. An hour later, I've forgotten about it, but as I go to sleep that night, I'll have a dream about being an ice cream taste tester that is required to eat one sample of fifty different flavors as they are traveling down a conveyor belt. The most recent dream recollection was extremely bizarre. My wife and daughter didn't exist, and I was in my home town where I had grown up, but everything was different. An Interstate highway had replaced the street I lived on, yet the houses were still there. A shopping mall now stood in the middle of my old neighborhood. Everybody had the same car, and they looked like photos I've seen of prototypes that never went into production. The really odd event in this dream was that I was with a woman I barely know. In "real life," I've seen her maybe three times and exchanged perhaps five sentences with her in conversation. I don't even know her full name. The professional explanation? Every time I go back to the area where I grew up, I am amazed at how it has grown in twenty years; new businesses that occupy what were once cornfields, new condos built in what were once the woods I played in, etc. The woman is someone I see maybe three times in a year. We belong to the same organization. I presume she is happily married, as I am. The last time I saw her before this summer was back in January. Recently I saw her in shorts and flip-flops for the first time. First of all, let me say that I have a wonderful wife who I've been married to for seventeen years. However, I would be a blatant liar if I tried to say I don't enjoy looking at women, especially in summer attire, just as I'm certain my wife enjoys looking at good-looking men. It's natural. The experts would say that I subconsciously thought about how my hometown has changed and how attractive this woman was, and that the thoughts were simply manifested in the form of a dream. Once again, this is probably true, but as a writer with a vivid imagination, I prefer to think of these events as an alternate existence; a parallel universe of sorts. Yes, it's another often-seen plot, but again, I'm attempting a unique approach. The novel that I have posted here, Reunions, has the main character enduring what can be best described as "out-of body" experiences. These are loosely based on events I myself underwent as a child. As you read the book, an explanation for these experiences is discovered, and the character's life is resolved. Check it out. If you don't want to spend twelve bucks, download the E-book found at outskirtspress.com./reunions. I think you'll enjoy it.
