Category: Denise

In preparation for my meeting with Sabine Lucas in September, I have started going through my dream journals. I found this dream from 2009:

Chris and I are at some kind of compound. Something happens there to his body. He has just 24 hours to live. A female worker shows me the room where bodies are processed. I don’t want to see, but she insists. There is a large room with a concrete floor. A body is spread-eagle, women are sewing a shroud that conforms to the shape of the body. They take long stitches, the muslin is a natural, unbleached color. The woman lifts a corner of the shroud, I see the decomposition of the body. They add chemicals to aid the process.

So we go home, we have an appointment at the facility at 11 that night, and the next morning. Suchi Sairam is somehow involved.

I look at Chris and say, “We have just this one day left together.” We plan to make love, but I also urge him to call family to say goodbye. He tries to call Scott, but the phone doesn’t seem to connect properly. Scott can’t hear him. I think he should call his mother, Cullan.

The workers come and deliver Chris’ body. It is in a fitted shroud. His body is like a murder scene diagram, with arms and legs spread open. Not composed as if ready to lie in a coffin. Lola comes and lays on one of his legs, like a guardian.

He is still with me, it seems, in the flesh. But I cannot understand how he can be dead and “alive” in the same house. I have a lot of anxiety about our short time together.

The next morning I begin to think about what to do with the house, where to live now that I am alone.

Day notes:

This seems to me to be a precognition of Chris’ near-death experiences in 2010 and 2011. In the fall of 2010, one year after this dream, he had surgery on his femur which resulted in a near-fatal bout of sepsis (blood infection). In the spring of 2011 he nearly died from an aortic dissection, which was repaired by sewing a channel made of Dacron into his artery.

Interesting that Lola guards his leg, and that he has two appointments with the “facility.” His state of being alive and dead simultaneously is like being in a coma.

This is a bit of a shadow of my recent dream, “Tree of Life Artwork,” where I am creating a sculpture with canvas.

Suchi’s husband is the mental health department head at Health East, which is where Chris spent rehab after his aortic dissection. There was an East Indian physician at Bethesda, the head of the brain injury rehab unit, who would call me every day and talk to me about Chris’ progress. She was an angel.

(Saturday, June 28, 2014)  New moon in Cancer on June 27. My nights and mornings have been full of dreaming. I awaken with the sense of having done lots of good work but without complete memories of the dreams themselves.

Except this fragment: “My death is approaching soon.” I don’t know if I hear a voice proclaim this or if the message presents itself as a new awareness. When I awaken I interpret the statement to be what Nigel Hamilton calls Mortificatio. Death preceding birth to a new plane of spiritual understanding. I am excited and feel grateful. But as the day wears on I am unsure. Is it my death? Or is a (forgotten) dream character telling me about their imminent death? Chris has been complaining of back pain and that resurrects fears in me about his heart.

Our owl has been calling from the pine tree near my bedroom window for the past couple of nights.

(Saturday, June 21, 2014, Summer Solstice)  I’m standing in the middle of Marigold Terrace, a street I used to play on when I was a child. A coworker comes by to tell me it’s time to get ready for our flight.

I’m a bit panicked. I thought the flight was leaving the following day. I run home (my childhood home on Monroe Street) to do a quick load of laundry and pack. I have two hours to get to the airport.

I enter the bedroom I share with my two sisters, both of whom are in the room. My sister Jo is irritated with my usual lack of planning. For many years of my life I had difficulty with time and calendars. Jamie is much younger so has no criticism of my character flaw. I dig through dresser drawers and the closet to find enough clothes for my extended trip to Europe. Cullan has just returned from a trip; he used my suitcase and my carry-on bag (with pockets for my red Chuck Taylors) and hasn’t returned them to me so I have to locate my baggage too.

The scene changes and I am boarding my flight with my coworkers. We are flying on a huge air bus with multiple levels and rooms. I think infinite levels and rooms. Karimah from the dream conference is there, and maybe Duane. The passengers are from many countries and cultures.

I take my seat and buckle in, preparing for take off. The interior of the cabin looks more like a movie theater than an airplane: it’s very spacious and I am seated far from the windows, in the front row.  The huge plane takes off effortlessly but once in the air it pitches and rolls rather dramatically. I have to get used to the motion, however, as this is how the plane behaves for the entire flight to France.

When we are well underway, I unbuckle and am “free to move about the cabin.” I head toward a light-skinned young black man seated in a corner next to a kiva fireplace (!). He is delicate and pretty, in a Denzel Washington kind of way. I sit next to him. He is so soft spoken I cannot understand him. I put my left ear next to his right cheek and still miss most of what he is saying to me. Finally I perceive that he has Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He is showing me two children’s books that have been written about the disease. I tell him my godmother died of Hodgkin’s when I was eight years old. Perhaps he is the author of one of the books, I am not sure. I want to comfort him. He is deeply sad.

Day notes:

My dreams of rooms with wood panels and floors seem to take place inside the Mother Tree. This Air Bus seems like the Mother Ship.

Marigold: Mary’s Gold. Flower of creativity and passion. “The Latin name for the European marigold was calendula, which derives from the Latin word calendae ‘the first day of the month.’ The word has also been translated as ‘a little calendar or little clock.’ The name was appropriate since the flower bloomed throughout the entire calendar year and provided monastery gardens and altars with a constant supply of golden blooms.”
http://languageofflowers.blogspot.com/2008/11/october-flower-marigolds-or-calendula.html

“Marigolds are known as the “Herb of the Sun” and are symbolic of passion and creativity. The Welsh believed that if marigolds were not open early in the morning, then a storm was on the way. Marigolds have been used as love charms and incorporated into wedding garlands. Water made from marigolds was thought to induce psychic visions of fairies if rubbed on the eyelids. In some cultures, marigold flowers have been added to pillows to encourage prophetic or psychic dreams.”
http://livingartsoriginals.com/flower-marigold.htm

Marigold is a favorite flower for Mexican/Aztec Day of the Dead ceremonies.
http://www.softseattravel.com/Marigold-Day-of-the-Dead-Flowers.html

Finally, the marigold is also sacred in India.

The dream takes place in the present time but in a past location. The sister closest in age (time) to me is still exasperated with my ability to manage time.

I fly with my coworkers, many of whom seem to be dreamworkers of my acquaintance in waking life. We fly east, the direction of the rising sun, the direction of awakening, over a great body of water. The sea of the unconscious.

I have an intimate conversation on the flight with a younger man, not unlike my conversation with Robert on the flight back from San Francisco. We sit on a low bench connected to a kiva fireplace. Perhaps a psychic clue about my trip to Santa Fe in September to do past-life work with Sabine Lucas. Robert talked of moving to Amsterdam and I seem to have some kind of past-life connection to the Netherlands; perhaps that will come to light in Santa Fe. Yesterday Cullan was wearing golden orange (the color of marigolds) bike shoes from the Netherlands (Lake brand).

There is an old wound from childhood that needs healing. In my eighth year I experienced tornadoes, floods and the death of my favorite aunt by lymphoma. Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is supposed to now be a treatable disease but my dental hygienist Lynn died of it last year. I grew up with her; she lived one street over from Marigold Terrace.