Last Dream
A short story of grief and healing, where reality and dreams intertwine.
I write this as a hopeful recollection so that when I am old and my memory fades, it might still seem real.
I have chosen to believe it as truth.
I hope this truth follows me until I go.
The winters up north never let us forget how brutal they were. Not because of Mother Nature’s relentless beatings, but because of the hope she teased of a better tomorrow. Glimmers of light and warmth faded as soon as they emerged as another deluge of ice reminded us of her overwhelming authority and utter indifference.
It was on one of the hopeful days that I took a train out of the city to meet Isaiah. I held the business card in my hand, running my thumb over the embossed text. It felt expensive, more than convincing me that my insurance wouldn’t cover this type of ‘experimental’ therapy, but I struggled to remind myself that the consultation was free. And I’m not sure what I would have done that day anyway.
I wrapped my scarf tight around my neck as I exited the station. Alone on the platform, my thoughts kept me company as the train departed for its next destination.
I knew little about the man and the program. As I walked, I realized I had no idea what “Isaiah” looked like, if that was indeed his name, or if I would even recognize him upon our meeting. I cursed myself for having not gained more control over what I was walking into, but, at the very least, I still had full control over walking out.
The ghostly bustle of quaint retailers and their clientele drew my gaze as I moved down the stone street. Nearly empty, it was only a matter of time before ultramodern high-rises and opulent tenants replaced these old-world cafes and jaded waiters. Only a few months prior, I had been one of them. I wondered if this was by design — meeting Isaiah so near where I once worked — as if to remind me of my alternative to not partaking in the experience.
Many said returning to work would help. Life must go on. But waiting tables only numbed the mind. I stopped the prescriptions. I stopped the wine. I was tired of sticking Band-Aids over the gaping hole in my heart. At some not-too-distant date, it would explode and threaten to suck in the whole of my being. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me then. I’m not sure I wanted to find out.
The alternative to my woes, many proposed, was purpose. “You need to find purpose,” they would implore, though no one knew quite how. They speculated that it might come from a new job, love, or home. But how could one find purpose or meaning in a child’s death? I needed time to grieve. I needed time to sit still. I needed time to just be.
So, there I was, seven months later, when the answer arrived.
I was the last remnant of a broken family. Living in a forlorn house filled with too-recent memories was one aspect of my life over which I knew I could take control. So I did. I put up the house almost as soon as the wake had ended and signed a month-to- month studio lease in a set of buildings several miles away.
The tenants were an eclectic group of stormy artists, talkative retirees, and withdrawn nomads. I intended to model my existence after the third troupe. However, one of these artists, on discovering I was a new tenant, graciously extended an invitation to his birthday gathering when we met in the elevator. As I now reflect, I hesitate to say it was a gracious rather than precautionary invitation, seeing that I lived next door.
His face contorted into a mixture of surprise and confusion upon my arrival. I realized he either forgot his invitation or, much more likely, had not expected me to join. Whatever the reason, he invited me in, thrust a drink into my hand, introduced me to a few guests before his attention steered elsewhere, and left me to fend for myself in the tight quarters. My interruption momentary, the room soon returned to its previous revelry. I retreated to a dim corner, pretending to drink the spiked juice I was given and cursing myself for coming.
What happened next remains a lingering mystery. I understand that many of the subsequent events were not meant for me to understand, but instead offered just enough information to grant me the courage to continue down a foreign, bewildering path.
She was tall and bald-headed, in a canary blue dress that matched her eyes. She sat next to me with a dancer’s grace and muttered something regarding the futility of her night’s conversations before eying my untouched drink.
“It’s worse than it looks,” she smiled.
I don’t recall much from our initial pleasantries, but she proceeded to put me at ease in a more subtle way than I knew the drink would. I found comfort in not straining to converse about trivial gossip or banter and was glad to see our dialogue progressed even more leisurely upon her openness regarding her late husband, who had passed several years earlier.
“These were the sorts of environments he thrived in. He didn’t need to know who you were or what you did but could talk for hours about the most frivolous things, with the biggest smile on his face.” She winced as she sipped her drink. “I used to hate him for that. Now I miss him for it.”
Her candor surprised me, though I surprised myself even more when I began talking about my son. We bonded over the fact that it was the insignificant things that we most missed — the rushed breakfasts before work and school; accidentally getting kicked in the middle of the night; the soft thumping of their once beating hearts.
“How long has it been?”
I had tried to force myself to stop counting, but I couldn’t.
“Almost six months.”
And then she asked a question I was entirely unprepared for.
“How are you doing?”
It was a question many avoided. Whether their hesitation stemmed from a fear of my unraveling, an unwillingness to engage, or an honest answer, I’m not sure. I was at fault for often avoiding the inquiry when I received it, but to hear it from someone who understood my pain awakened my sincerity. So, I told her the truth.
I didn’t know how or what I was doing or why I was doing it. I told her about the treatments, healings, friends, families, prayers, support groups, therapists, meditating, and even about my jobs, my house, my move, and the ever-enveloping thoughts that threatened to consume me. She smiled and put her hand over mine when my avalanche of words had settled.
“I understand you. Can I tell you about the experience that helped me?”
That’s what she called it — an “experience,” a brave new form of therapy that would not put its patrons in yet another psychoanalyst’s office, but at the root of their pain.
She called it “Last Dream.”
It felt like a recommendation one might make when suggesting a new restaurant or dish — not a medicine for one’s mental health or a loved one’s passing. At the time, I contributed her offhandedness to the booze and merriment in the apartment, but, as I write this now, I’m not so sure.
My brow furrowed as she explained the experience. She used elusive phrases: “A unique psychotherapy”… it “aims to provide a sense of closure for your loss”… the program exists “so you can say goodbye.”
Her eyes, so soft and open only moments before, now contained a degree of fanaticism, bordering on cult-like. I noticed a nagging pain in my forearm; she must have seen it as well, as she removed her hand from my wrist and dug through her handbag. I withdrew, wishing we could go back to sharing the memories of our loved ones.
To this day, I’ve never seen that woman again. I never took in her name, as is often the case when one’s focus is elsewhere. I think she told me before she vanished, but my eyes were fastened to the card she had placed in my palms. When my gaze finally broke free from its spell, she was gone as unexpectedly as she had arrived.
I didn’t know if this woman was a precursor to the experience or if she was ever a client at all. I didn’t know whose friend she was at the gathering, if she knew anyone, or was one of the nomads living at the complex. I asked the host several days later on the stairwell about the woman in the canary blue dress, but he was at as much a loss as me, though he was the first to admit that he couldn’t remember half of the night’s events.
It seemed a chance meeting that would soon launch a series of implausible proceedings equally enigmatic in nature. Knowing what I do at present, to amount this woman’s appearance to a gift is naïve. I believe now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this woman was the first part of my “experience.”
My eyes returned to the card she had thrust into my hand. It contained a downtown address imprinted in embossed text and, even more mysteriously on the reverse:
As the sun rises, it’s time to go.
Me to my world… And you to your own.
So many strange things have happened that I often pinch myself, waiting to wake up. It is the reason I write this recollection; to prove to myself that she and all that would soon occur were not just a dream.
As I showered that night with the music thumping next door, I knew a new road lay before me. It led somewhere unique. Somewhere new. A path infinitely more stirring than the one I now walked. How could I find meaning on this present path? I felt myself moving away from the pain as I had moved from the house, no longer medicating or drinking, but now with notions of numbing myself with the vanities of the party a few walls away.
I constantly looked for meaning, despite being convinced that I would never find it. In the time on clocks, the number of clouds in the sky, or words on the sympathy cards that still trickled in, I looked for anything that might bring me new truth or hope.
I needed something to tell me things would someday be okay.
Was this it?
Even now, as I look back on these events, I wonder what might have happened if I jettisoned that card so far out of my universe that it may as well have never entered. What would have become of me? Would I still be here? Would I be with him? I realize now that I went that day because I was tired of the numbness. I didn’t want to forget. I didn’t want to move on. I wanted to feel.
And as I approached the gloomy, deserted warehouse in front of me, my mind lingered upon something that’s haunted me ever since his death:
I haven’t cried. I couldn’t remember the last time I did. The professionals and friends from whom I sought help said this was not unusual. They attributed it to a perpetual state of shock, a refusal to accept reality or, so callously, that what happened simply didn’t affect me in the way it should. No one offered that final suggestion outright, but I could feel it in the front of their thoughts and on the edge of their lips. No one would dare utter even the slightest supposition that a mother did not grieve her child’s death. I was glad they didn’t.
I wanted answers — about his death, about why I seemed unable to process it.
The downtown address led me to a nearly deserted modern high-rise. Either everyone was still working from home, or the structure was about to be demolished. No matter the reason, the atmosphere’s eeriness shook my senses. After riding the elevator to the floor corresponding to the card, the double-doors opened to reveal a white, windowless lobby that seemed incapable of collecting dust.
A sharp-featured woman in a black blouse stood behind the enormous counter across from me. “You must be Grace.”
She asked me a few questions in a side room about me, him, and my referral to “Last Dream,” and scribbled my answers on her tablet as though under a deadline. I was hurried out in less than fifteen minutes and told I should expect a call from Isaiah. The woman said he was the one who could answer my plethora of questions, but as I exited, she responded to my most pressing one:
“What is it, exactly, that you do?” She offered a bland, robotic smile.
“The impossible.”
“Miss Leigh,” a familiar voice resonated, identical to the one I had heard a few days previous over the phone. The man wore a frock coat over a meticulously tailored grey suit and radiated a cheek-to-cheek smile, full of unblemished white teeth.
This was Isaiah.
“It is my humble pleasure to finally meet you,” he spoke as he bowed his head. His accent intrigued me as much as it did over the phone. It must have been a blend of several dialects and territories, yet it was reassuringly instinctive and eloquent. He appeared to me a sharp-dressed, elegant, and worldly being. He put me at ease in person, just as he had calmed my anxieties over the phone when he suggested that it would be more conducive and educational to meet in person.
So here we were, in the middle of winter, in a deserted warehouse with two plastic folding chairs to keep us company.
“Please.” He motioned to the seat opposite his own as if I might have chosen somewhere else to sit. It felt strange, even eerie, that day in the warehouse, yet to deny its effect would be juvenile. Looking back, it was the first in a long series of methodical calculations to gain my curiosity, commitment, and, most importantly, my utterly blind trust.
Isaiah smoothed out the creases in his pants as he sat, although they were already pristinely pressed. He offered a soft smile, and before I could blurt out any of the questions swirling in my mind, he spoke.
“I’m sure you are wondering many things. So, if I might, let me answer a few of what I venture are the more pressing ones.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward. “But before I do, allow me to reiterate how sorry I am to hear of your son’s passing. To lose a child is the cruelest grief to bear. It is a sorrow that lacks meaning and significance. I offer you my deepest condolences, Miss Leigh.”
I said a few words in answer, I hardly know what.
“I hope, if you will allow it, to help you on your journey to the moment where his memory may no longer bring you pain, but solace.” As I met his gaze, I felt a strange warmth emanate amid the icy air. It was odd, to be sure, like the feeling I felt with the woman in the canary dress. But it was good.
“Now, as I mentioned on the phone, this will not cost you a thing until you chose to move forward, which, of course, lies entirely in your hands. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be covered by insurance. Still, just as we cater a different experience to each client, we are happy to work with you on a price.”
To me, this translated as: expensive.
“Secondly, we believe that healing deep wounds requires dealing with their roots. While our experience bears fruit for most of those who undergo it, it would be imprudent not to mention that it often leaves many feeling worse mentally, physically, and emotionally. These states, I believe, are prerequisites we must suffer through in facing our terrors and anxieties.”
He was a master of suspense and intrigue, but also of severe confusion.
“Life is a puzzle, Miss Leigh. I will not pretend to know why many things do or do not happen; I only know it is up to us to choose whether we make sense of them or not. We may find no meaning in a child’s death; instead, only acceptance. I won’t pretend that what I can offer is your missing piece, but I do believe we can help you.”
His last sermon made no sense to me. A few moments later, he leaned back in his chair; his vague pitch was completed, and he offered me the floor. I had many questions, doubts, and queries, but one now stood at the forefront of my thoughts.
I asked him what Last Dream might provide that my other treatments had not. That Cheshire cat grin crossed his lips once again, and what he then described to me was so disconcerting and fantastical that I simultaneously wanted to strike him across the face, storm out of the warehouse, and begin my journey then and there.
“We have arranged all that is necessary,” Isaiah offered in his usual tone. Over the past few months, I had come to trust the man, but sometimes wished he didn’t seem so enigmatic. I still felt the bond that connected us, although that day, it seemed weaker. It was a delicate act he played between therapist and entrepreneur. I still wasn’t sure if this was his program or if he was simply a middleman. I wouldn’t know until much later that this was all by design. None of the technicalities were important. Their focus was to keep my focus on the present. On the journey.
My thoughts traversed many paths that day; the most dangerous threatened to hijack my commitment. I remembered what Isaiah had mentioned on the phone the night before: “You will have many thoughts as you begin. I have no doubt they have already consumed much of your time. My advice, Miss Leigh, is to acknowledge their existence and let them go.”
He must have known this was easier said than done, as he quickly followed with, “I don’t pretend this is easy. I only beg you not to seek answers in death. You will never find them. You must let them come to you.”
I boarded the plane, unsure of where I was going or whom I was going with, but, as Isaiah reinforced, none of that mattered. He must have known there was plenty of time for me to think on the plane, but I couldn’t. The thoughts were too many.
So, I slept.
“Señorita Leigh! Señorita Leigh!” The voice clamored above the raucous cry of passenger arrivals. I discovered its source in a tiny woman waving a straw hat near the end of the onlookers. She snatched my bag and scooted off before I had a chance to say hello. I supposed she knew who I was, and that was good enough for her.
Moments later, I found myself in the torn leather seats of an old sedan, gazing at the aged scenery and edifices that passed by. I fought to resist the concerns and judgments still fluttering in my head. I had crossed the threshold. I had entered the new world. I was on the yellow brick road, I told myself. Don’t click your heels yet.
The inn was nothing special, to phrase it delicately. As the woman led me up the decaying wooden staircase, I began to wonder where my money was going; I had handed over a big chunk from the sale of my home. While the experience was “fully refundable,” the hundreds of legal documents, dozens of signatures, and several lawyers had convinced me otherwise. Yet Isaiah’s voice still echoed in the back of my mind, “Don’t question. Feel. Be.” My absolute conviction in him and the experience was either going to be my downfall or salvation. I didn’t know where to place what little hope I had left, so why not in him?
After a few foreign phrases that I was sure were curses, the woman unlocked the door to my room and shoved herself through. In a single motion, she dropped my bag on the twin-sized bed, thrust open the dusty curtains, and flicked on the fan. It didn’t budge. Her solution was a gentle shrug.
I took in my temporary home as she did some last-minute housekeeping. It was downright alarming. It smelled of mildew and smoke as if the windows and door had not opened until just then. A chaotic assortment of stains joined to form a coarse decoration on the brown rug; I didn’t want to contemplate wandering down the rabbit hole of what lurked beneath the bedsheets. We had passed more pleasant hotels and boarding houses on the way to the inn; surely, they weren’t all full. Surely the experience could offer its clientele a reasonable home during their stays. Or was it different for everyone, just as Isaiah mentioned the experience could be? And if that were the case, why would they choose this place for me?
The woman’s voice interrupted the cascading thoughts threatening to overwhelm me. She nodded to my luggage as I faced her.
“Only you need?” She repeated in broken English.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Only what I need.”
She grunted, which I took to be her approval.
“Six tomorrow. Vamos.” She exited to head down the hallway, but I leaped after her. Isaiah never told me what was to come past this point. He had told me what the end would be, but not what would be on the journey itself.
“Where?” I asked. “Where do we go?”
She stopped in the hallway. The tiny woman smiled a broad grin, revealing a wide array of missing teeth, eerily reminiscent of Isaiah’s Cheshire cat grin.
“El santuario. Vamos al santuario.”
I was relieved to discover just how temporary my temporary home was. After inspecting my sneakers and forcing me to swap my sweater for a t-shirt, the tiny woman, whose name I unsuccessfully struggled to draw out of her, forever led me away from that eccentric inn. We drove several kilometers to a nearly deserted transportation post before she swerved to the side of the road and tossed out my bag. She hastily motioned for me to exit and stand alongside the few locals waiting for a ride.
“You wait,” the woman uttered as the sedan’s exhaust fumed underneath her. I could hardly believe my sudden predicament.
“Wait? For what?”
“Autobús.”
“For how long?”
The woman shrugged. “Get off at end of line; then, you begin.” And with another frenzied smile, she zipped off into oblivion.
There was no phone, watch, or clock to count the minutes and hours that passed before the bus came, just as there was no map or navigation system to show in which direction it traveled. I stared out the dented window at the passing countryside, seated behind several rows of unfazed, caged chickens. They seemed to not care about what time it was or where we were heading. Maybe it was okay if I didn’t either.
I wanted to scream from the bottom of my lungs, but I knew nothing would come out. My mental and physical states were dwindling. Isaiah warned me of all the possible collapses, but certainly I’d be spared physically. If he hoped for my rebirth, it couldn’t include my carnal death, particularly if I were funding it. I had followed every wish demanded of me only to find myself on the verge of collapse in the heart of a foreign wilderness.
The bus had stopped at the foundation of a series of mountains, cloaked by the refuge of the jungle. The chickens had departed my company many posts earlier, and I was the lone passenger to descend the bus steps before it kicked up dust and disappeared in the direction from which we came. Several yards away, a path had bestowed the entrance to this asylum, leading into a beckoning array of greenery. There was no doubt that this was the Sanctuary, just as there was no doubt as to why I had been requested to change into more comfortable clothes. I had looked up at the mountains looming overhead, said a quick prayer that I wouldn’t have to climb them, and took a deep breath before moving forward blindly, once again, into the unfathomable.
I moved through the dense brush for what felt like days, spiraling further into a maze of my own making. The exotic chirps and squalors of birds harmonized to form a soothing, unbroken lull. The serene ambiance would have done wonders for my blood pressure and anxiety if my awareness had surrendered to their beauty instead of my ever- elusive destination. I kept on the forlorn path, speculating on where it might lead, or if it led anywhere.
I continued at the same sluggish pace my headaches came and went. I wasn’t sure how long ago they had begun — an hour? Five? Five minutes? I hadn’t brought any pain relievers, but only the necessities, as Isaiah had instructed: comfortable clothes, sneakers, and a token representing the bond with my son. Upon leaving the inn, I grabbed insect repellent, water, and protein bars at the tiny woman’s insisting, but now regretted passing on the ibuprofen. It reminded me too much of the old, temporary fixes I had cast away. I wanted to advance straight to the heart of the problem and operate. That’s why I was here to begin with. But, at that moment, a little bit of Tylenol would’ve been fucking great.
I’m sure I was being watched, but felt so alone on that trek, even amid a jungle flourishing with life. Everywhere my eyes gazed, a deluge of the most vibrant, saturated colors I had ever seen threatened to paralyze me. I traveled through this new domain a foreigner, one who had lost the very crux of what made her feel at home anywhere, now seeking to find some resolution here.
As the path weaved its way under a string of low-hanging greenery, another sound joined the birds’ melody. I ducked my head below a branch and rounded the bend before dropping my bag on the jungle floor and doing all I could to prevent my jaw from falling off my face.
Vibrant cascades of water poured from an unseen tributary above; mossy rocks and boulders behind the chutes jutted outwards to form tendrils of pathways and streams before unifying into a beckoning lagoon. The apex of a hidden world, I thought. Yet the climax was still to come.
I didn’t hesitate to slip out of the damp clothes that clutched my skin. I flung them onto a nearby rock and dove deep into the water, submerging myself for as long as my lungs could bear. The water felt like nothingness, like it wasn’t real; like a long-awaited peace come to offer respite from all the madness.
As I broke through the surface, I kept my eyes shut as the tunes of birds and the vivacity of the forest flooded my other senses two-fold. I let the lagoon carry my weight; my body floated underneath the falls like a leaf on a pond. I felt everything, and yet nothing. I finally felt free — not from the world, but from my thoughts.
I was here, wherever here was, and that was okay.
The house emerged from the dense vegetation as if from a dream. Sharp wooden edges and walls guided its peculiar perimeter, framing large, circular windows reflecting the rainforest’s sights — a fairy tale cottage with a modern twist.
After a few minutes of searching, I located the large entry door. I knocked three times and waited, hoping that someone might greet me with further instructions. I knew the house would be here, and I knew what should happen, but I felt my nerves begin to knot. The trepidation was starting to take effect.
Any response from inside the home escaped me. I tried the door; it budged. I yanked further; it slid open, revealing a pre-entry vestibule that led into the main house. I didn’t bother knocking on the second door; I twisted the brass knob and crossed another threshold.
The energy and sounds of the forest silenced as the door closed behind me. I took in the open, Spartan interior, adorned only with a home’s necessities. A wood stove rested underneath a bookshelf embellished with an assortment of foreign decor. I squinted as I studied the shelf’s objects closer. An envelope lay among them.
I moved towards the mantelpiece and read the stylish font addressing the envelope to me. Without hesitation, I slid my finger through the seal and withdrew the note:
Miss Leigh, I hope you found strength and calm in your journey.
As discussed, the house is yours for the night.
Please kindly exit by midday. Another guest is expected.
The letter’s parting words were further down:
Be ready at midnight.
Like the rest of this experience, the words were foreboding and ambiguous, yet tinged with anticipation. I turned and scanned the open floor plan, looking for anything that might settle my mind. I remembered how I had felt floating in the lagoon with the water gliding over and under my skin, and I began to crave a shower.
The bedroom rested at the top of a stairway on the other side of the house. As with the rest of the home’s fixtures, the room’s furnishings offered no personality. It was as if it had all been decorated to serve only one’s basic needs, to provide no distraction or disturbance from the night’s impending events.
I unzipped my bag and unfolded my silk nightgown. A few creases lay here and there from the journey, but its memory remained untainted. My son had loved its texture and softness. When he would climb into my bed on a restless night, he would never cease to dream only seconds after his cheek pressed against the gown. It still carried his scent, many months later, but I’d washed it to erase those painful memories, struggling to forget. Now, I found myself struggling to remember.
I slipped the gown over my figure after the revitalizing shower and studied myself in the mirror’s reflection. Here I was, long last, at the journey’s end…
… at my new beginning.
Someone must have placed the drink on the kitchen table while I slept upstairs.
The few hours of rest did me good, though my failed attempt to meditate afterward only left me craving another nap. But it was almost eleven now. There wasn’t time.
I stared at the sludgy, dark brown brew. Surely, I couldn’t drink this concoction. The liquid spit bubbles in my face, beckoning my cracked lips to force it down. What was my choice: to not drink, call off the experience, and be rescued or hold my breath, slug the mixture back and go further down the rabbit hole? Or was it only a placebo to distract me from the truth of the experience?
Fear seized my weak will and failing senses. My hand shook: the bowl felt as heavy as an anvil. My eyes watered as my mind debated. The thoughts that were so often my enemy were now trying to shield me. From what? I thought. Surely the drink wouldn’t kill me. What were these judgments protecting me from? The answer came suddenly.
I was afraid — afraid of what was on the other side; afraid of living a life without my son. But I was tired of fear. I was tired of hesitation. I was tired of my debilitating thoughts. Isaiah’s voice came back to me. Do not question. Feel. Just be. Acknowledge your thoughts and let them go. To me, that translated quite crudely at the moment.
“Fuck it.”
And I drank. Every last drop.
I sat in silence for what seemed like ages before things began to feel strange. My eyes were fastened to the clock face as it ticked towards midnight. I hadn’t averted my gaze to investigate the squeaks of the floorboards or take note of the branches swaying in the wind when, inexplicably, my eyes failed to register where the hands on the clock pointed. Up, down, sideways — it seemed like time had stopped. Time, the ruler of all, had no place here, yet it told me what was to come, at any minute, or had the moment passed? I didn’t know. I had faded into a waking dream.
I felt dizzy. Shadows seemed to drift on the walls. I climbed to my feet, threw open the sliding glass doors, and moved onto the deck. The stream flowing below drifted in silence. The water seemed to glide in all directions, defying nature’s laws. I closed my eyes, and the sights of my confusing world faded away. Sound soon followed, and I found myself in a state of nothingness. If I had opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by infinite darkness, I wouldn’t have been surprised; my heart rate would have slowed.
A soft noise brought each of my senses back, one by one. But like the hands on the clock and the stream below, I could not fathom from where it resonated. Behind me? Above? Below? It grew louder before I realized what it was:
Someone was humming. The tune was off-key and unfamiliar. I heard its haunting melody grow closer when a creak on the wood porch interrupted the music. I hadn’t moved; the scrape didn’t result from me.
The hairs on the back of my neck straightened. Goosebumps formed up and down my bare arms. My heart endeavored to dive into the river below. Something, someone was behind me. I swallowed. My breath refused to cooperate. It stuck somewhere deep within me, as frightened as I was. I tried to turn, but it was impossible like I felt all of this was.
I stood, fastened to the porch, my eyes glued to the water below when the voice spoke.
“Mommy?”
There are moments in life when you lose all senses of being, intellect, and control. When you’re not sure of how to respond or what to do. Your mind stops, and your body guides you. That’s how I felt in that moment. That’s how I felt in that inexplicable moment when my body took over and turned to face my son.
An overdue rain pelted the orchids on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The flowers resurrected with a lost vitality; their thirst quenched with the arrival of a new season. And as the aromas of tea, espresso beans, and baked bread overtook my senses, I woke too. To a world I had departed, yet one I never quite left.
A piano melody vibrated throughout the quaint café. Across from me, Isaiah took a long sip of his espresso. I had harbored the distant hope of a peaceful, unaccompanied journey home, one without a debriefing. But Isaiah, always astute and attuned to the natural world around him, had discerned my wish. He seemed to be there solely to keep me company until our arrangement was brought to its imminent end.
So, we sat — me lost in thought and him ever-present, as always.
“Guaria Moradas.” Isaiah’s baritone broke our peace. My gaze followed his own, back to the purple orchids quenching their thirst. “I recently learned that they are an ‘epiphyte.’ They do not have their roots in the soil, but instead gather nutrients from the air and rain.” He took a moment. “To live and survive, they must lean on another plant or tree for support.”
I offered him a soft smile. His metaphor was clear.
Isaiah rolled back the cuffs of his suit jacket to glance at the time. “Is there anything else you’ll need from me before you go?”
There was so much I wanted, but I wasn’t sure how much I needed. I wanted to know why the journey had been constructed as it had. I wanted to learn more about that house, what was in that drink, and how I came to spend one last night with my son.
He had been there; there was no doubt. I spent the night playing with, talking to, and falling asleep alongside my baby boy. And when I woke, he was gone as suddenly as he had arrived. My brain struggled to wrap itself around our brief reunion. I fixated on the last memories we shared. They weren’t any different from our past life together, but only an extension of it. So I wasn’t sure how to feel as I had exited in the morning, or what to say to Isaiah, who was outside, awaiting me. I merely followed him through the foliage to a fishing boat that carried us to town.
“All those people you’ve met on your journey, they share in your deep loss. Isaiah brought me out of my dream to the present. He confirmed my suspicions. So much of the experience was by design; there seemed no knowing where his influence exited, and the randomness of reality took over. I realized then that many of the players I had encountered — the lady in the canary dress, the woman who helped guide me to the Sanctuary, even Isaiah — must have sat where I did now.
“And if you should choose to help us someday, we, and all those who share in our sorrow, would welcome you with open arms.”
His offer resonated, yet the experience was already unusual enough. To become a member of the world’s oddest support group was a prospect a bit too far off. But there was no longer any enigma or confusion behind its purpose. We all needed help. Who better to offer a hand than those who had needed one before?
All my confusion and uncertainly left me with one question. The one I wanted and the one I needed. The question. And I fully assumed that I wouldn’t receive its answer. Yet here we were.
“Was it real?” I managed. My soul ached to know.
Isaiah finished off his espresso. He must have been used to my question by now. He placed his spoon alongside the curve of the porcelain cup, his unflappability weakening my composure.
“How? How does it work?”
“If you should discover how, would that help?” He met my pleading gaze. I couldn’t fathom a response. Honestly, I didn’t know.
“There is no great difference between the reality of what you experienced and the truth of what occurred, just as there is no great explanation. What truly matters is what the experience does.” His chair squeaked underneath him as he motioned around the café. “The piano you hear, the flowers you see, the glass you touch, the coffee you taste, the beans you smell, those are what your body tells you is real. But what we feel, on the other hand, that is always real. That is our truth.”
We sat in silence for a moment. The ivory keys and steady rain broke the calm. Finally, Isaiah leaned forward and gave me his heartening smile.
“The truth, Miss Leigh, is that it doesn’t matter how it works. It only matters if.” He took me in. And, in our final moment, he asked what we both were wondering. “Did it?”
I felt my lungs expand as I gazed at the overcast sky through the plane’s cabin window. The paralysis that had kept me frozen on the porch had now all but perished. My mind wandered as I reflected on the strange place I had been and the strange place to where I now returned. Maybe I’d start over with only the luggage that traveled with me.
I held my nightgown in my hands. It rested on my lap like a blanket, shielding me from the chilly cabin air. I pulled it close to my body. Somehow, it smelled like him again.
I took another deep breath as the plane ventured down the tarmac. The journey was strange. I don’t think I will ever entirely understand it, or what I was supposed to do or feel. Maybe it was what I had craved from the beginning: to just be.
And as the wheels of the plane lifted and soared into the awaiting clouds, I lifted my chin. I breathed deep. Whatever had happened in that house that night, I decided, at that moment, was real. There would be no questioning it.
Because it was real to me.
All my endless reflections and meditations seemed to sink away with the falling sun. I took another breath. This one stuck somewhere deep within me, unable to come out. I tried, helplessly, to swallow.
My hands shook. I clutched the edge of the torn armrest, and as my fingernails dug into the fabric of the gown, I knew what was about to come.
The hole in my heart exploded.
And I cried.
Tom is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. He's currently studying English part-time at Oxford. Here, you’ll always find new fiction or an essay on Sundays. Visit tomkalbanese.com or subscribe for more.