This Dreamer’s Life

 

I have been a dreamer as long as I can remember.

 

I imagine that the life of a non-dreamer feels like being in a boat on the ocean.  You know that you must row to get to the shore, so you row.

 

When you’re a dreamer, something feels wrong with just rowing.  There must be more.  So instead of rowing like any rational human being would do, you jump in the water to explore other possibilities, to see if  there is something to give meaning to your existence.

 

You might be eaten by a shark, but you might just as easily encounter a whale or a sea turtle and go for the swim of your life.

 

It’s about imagining possibilities.

 

Sometimes you are totally blown away by what’s out there.

 

I had one such experience, and even though I’m still not quite sure what to make of it, I’d like to share it with you.

 

I met this man, George, at work.  We were on the same team for a good while until he moved to another job in the plant.

 

George was one of the kindest, gentlest, sweetest men I’d ever met.  I never heard him speak an ill word about anyone.  He was always smiling and being around him just made me feel good to be alive.

 

George passed away in 2011 just a few months shy of his 50th birthday.

 

Just before he passed away, I was talking to one of the women he worked with (she and George did the same job, but she worked day shift and he worked afternoon shift).  She said she was going to the hospital that evening to visit him.   I said I wanted to do that too, and thought I’d go the next evening.

 

I went home that afternoon and as I was sitting at my desk–the very desk I’m writing this from now–I started thinking about George.  I thought about our conversations, the red heart-shaped cake I made for his birthday one year (he had a February-close-to-Valentine’s-Day birthday), the trip our team took to the label plant, what a joy it was to know him.

 

Then I was standing in the doorway of a hospital room.  There was a bed on the right hand side.  I knew the person in it was George, even though he didn’t really look like George.  He looked different and he didn’t have his glasses on.  George had very thick glasses that were unmistakable.

 

I stood in the doorway and we looked at each other.  No words were spoken but something passed between us that felt like love and gratitude and sorrow and a thankfulness that I’d had the privilege of considering him my friend.  I let him know that he was one of the finest people I knew and that he had affected my life in the best way.

 

The next morning, I met my friend Dave for breakfast in the cafeteria.  When he told me that they hadn’t allowed any visitors in to see George the previous evening, I said that it was ok because I got to see him anyway.  I told him how I’d seen George the night before and how we had exchanged these feelings without words.  I explained to him what I saw–where the bed was, how George didn’t look like himself, how he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

 

Dave looked at me so solemnly and said, “Carol, George passed away last night.  They weren’t allowing visitors in because all his family was in there with him.”

 

Total disbelief.  I was blown away.

 

When our break ended, Dave was going downstairs to talk to George’s boss–who had been to see George–about something.  I asked Dave to ask about the room.  I wanted to know when you walked in the room where the bed was.  I needed to know.

 

When I met Dave for lunch, he told me that the bed was on the right.  George’s boss had also volunteered some additional information.  He said George didn’t look like himself.  He wasn’t wearing his glasses.

 

Chills ran down my spine.

 

The thing is, it didn’t feel like something in my head, the experience felt real.  I was standing in the doorway.  Not like I imagined it in my head as I sat at my desk, but more like I dreamed it.  It felt like I was physically there like it does in a dream, but I was awake.

 

But there was a slight discrepancy that bothered me.  What George’s boss said led me to believe that George didn’t look like George because he wasn’t wearing his glasses.  What I experienced was that George didn’t look like George as I knew him and he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

 

A minor difference?  Maybe, but it made me doubt the feeling that I’d really been there.  Had I really been there, I should have seen the George I knew without his glasses not someone I’d never seen before that I thought was George.

 

It’s crazy, but I didn’t feel any regret because I didn’t go see George before he passed away.  I felt thankful that I was able to let him know what he had meant to me.  It felt so real.  Is it possible that it was?

 

Sometime later, after the funeral I think, I was walking past the Thank You board at work, you know, the place where they post the thank you cards usually from employees saying thank you for flowers sent, money collected, food showing up in a time of need.

 

A picture caught my eye.

 

I stopped to look at it.  It looked very familiar.  It was the George I’d seen in the hospital bed.  The person I knew was George even though he didn’t look like George.  It was on some correspondence sent by his family, I think maybe a program from his funeral.

 

It was a picture of George that looked like it might have been from high school.  That was the guy.  That was the person in the hospital bed that I knew was George.

 

I started crying.

 

I couldn’t talk about it for weeks.

 

Can it be that as I opened a doorway in my mind that led to George, a door was being opened in anticipation of his departure that made it possible for us to connect somewhere out  there in the vastness of the universe?

 

I don’t know, but I’d like to think so.

 

I’d like to think that staying open to possibilities makes them possible.

 

And I’d like to say to George if he’s out there listening, thanks for dropping in on me before your final trip home.

 

It meant the world to me.

 

 

 

Life is filled with endless possibilities.  Have a question or experience you’d like to share?  Feel free to leave a comment!  I’d love to hear about it.

 

 

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