July 2, 2011
Scream
I woke up screaming this week. A bad dream, said the Iowan. Eventually I went back to sleep, but the rest of the night was uneasy. The next night at dinner, he asked me about it, but I said I could not remember what was going on with me. Sleep walking and talking is not unusual in my family. Mr. B. will “speak in tongues” in the night, the Iowan says. But I quieted down long ago. And had not screamed in my sleep in decades.
Until just after midnight on June 29, 2011. The truth is I did have a vague notion about it all day. I didn’t really want to talk about it. Until I did. “Maybe it was because this was the day daddy died, 20 years ago.” I was born on Father’s Day. I had his black, curly hair. His laugh. His way of never meeting a stranger.
And on June 29, 1991, he shook hands with a friend after a session at the coffee shop, then ran straight into the path of a car. Did not walk. He ran.
Distressing thoughts, emotions, shock, these things can be tidied up and put away, but only for so long. The old mantle clock’s single peal at a quarter after midnight was all it took to crack open the mind’s thin colluding door. And out it came, a long, ear-splitting, scream. I imagine it sounded like loss.
Finally.
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Oh, Carole.
It’s okay, Deron. Really.
Beautifully recounted, Carole. I can feel the depths it rose from. I’m so sorry that such a memory is yours, but I’m glad that this saying of it may help now in the holding of it.
Carole, as you know, anniversaries are not mechanical, arithmetical markers. We carry them inside.
Thinking of the people like my father-in-law, who reposed in the parlor virtually comatose for two weeks and expired only once his wife’s birthday had come and gone and both of his sons had arrived to be with him. That kind of thing.
And your cry in the night.
I hope that the release of your pent-up cry will bring you to a place that is, if not precisely joyful, peaceful.
Cece.