The
Grass Beneath My Feet
I vaguely remember the first
dream. I was 7 years old. At 7 years old, dreams are just stories in
your sleep and nothing more.
A few years later, I had another
dream. It seemed familiar but not
anything that I locked into my memory.
I was 13 years old when I had the next
dream. I knew then it was one I’d dreamt
before. But, I thought nothing of it
until two days later when my aunt called to say that Uncle Carl had passed away
in his sleep. I knew then that they
were more than just similar dreams.
I mentioned the dreams to my very
sensible and serious mother. I told her
I thought they meant something. She told
me I sounded as hippy-dippy as Lola.
Lola was my grandmother. She was just as “hippy-dippy” as her
daughter-in-law claimed she was. Her
name was really Ruth but she wanted to be called Lola, especially by me. She didn’t want it known that she was
anyone’s grandma, despite the fact that she was 69 years old. Lola wore loud colors and high heels and
bleached her hair.
“Lola,” I tentatively spoke one day as
I stopped by her home after school, “I’ve had a couple of weird dreams.”
“Oooohhh… dreams! I love dreams,” she crooned, “Tell me all
about it. Martini?”
“Lola! I’m only 13!” I giggled and silently
guessed that it would be with Lola, my grandmother, that I would first find
myself drunk.
“It’s never too early to start pickling
yourself, hon. Now, tell me about those
dreams.”
I explained how they seemed to be the
same: I’m looking at a mirror, but my
image fades and someone else’s image slowly appears. That person takes my hand and pulls me into
the mirror, into a beautiful, vibrant meadow full of flowers and butterflies. The person can talk to me, but I don’t hear his voice. He describes where we are using lots of vivid
detail – as my English teacher would say. Then he just leaves me stranded, and I drift back
to sleep.”
“Doesn’t seem so weird, hon. Do you know this person?” Lola asked as she
nibbled on toothpick-skewered olive.
“Well, it’s a different person each
dream. But the dream is the same. And I always know the person. The weird part is this: After the dream, the next day, ya know? That person dies. First it was Mrs. Briscoe next door. Then it was my sometimes-babysitter, Mrs.
Pett, and then it was Uncle Carl. They
all die after they’ve been in my dreams.
That’s the weird part, Lola.”
“Baby girl,” Lola began, cradling my
face in her leathered hands, “You’ve got a gift. Some people take their gift and embrace it
and hold it dear. Others shut this gift
out as if it were a curse. You need to
decide if you will embrace it or let it curse you. If I were you and I had such a gift, I’d figure
out what to do with it, how to use it.
Maybe those people have a message for you.”
“But what if I can’t figure out their
message?” I asked Lola, wishing she had a better answer for me.
“Then just ignore it and have weird
dreams for the rest of your life,” she said wistfully and then she burped.
I nodded and figured that she was not on
her first martini of the day. I left her
home understanding my dreams no more than I had before.
Two weeks later, I had the dream
again. Only this time, my dog led me to
the meadow. The next day, Rusty was
found dead under the backyard shed. I
close that night to practice meditation in the way Lola had done so many
times. I lit a couple of candles that I
swiped from the formal dining room table and sat cross legged in the middle of
my room. “Speak to me, Rusty!” I chanted
over and over and over. Eventually, my
right leg went to sleep and Rusty never said anything to me – in English or
Irish Setter.
It could be that they were only dreams.
That Christmas, I dreamt again and Lola
met me in the mirror. “Oh honey!” she
giggled, “The grass feels like velvet under my feet! Isn’t this place marvelous?” I tried to tell her that I wanted to embrace
my gift. I tried to tell her that I
wanted to hear her message. I tried, but
my voice didn’t work.
I woke to the phone ringing. It was only a matter of minutes before my
mother appeared at my door and said, “It’s Lola, your grandmother,” as if I
didn’t know. “She’s gone, honey.”
I spent the next three days trying
really, really hard to understand what Lola would be telling me: I was trying
to embrace my gift. The day of the
funeral dawned and all I could think of, despite my desperate need to
understand Lola’s business with me, was that she would hate her funeral. She was not formal, nor was she stuffy, nor
was she sentimental. As I sat in the
chapel, I heard the preacher ask if anyone had anything to share, and I
knew. I did not hear any voices; I did
not see any visions; I just knew.
Without hesitation, I walked to the
podium. My hands shook and my pits
dripped, but my inner resolve was steady.
I leaned into the microphone and sang, “Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl. She wore a feather in her hair and a dress
cut down to there…” I glanced at the
congregation. There were a few smiles,
my mother was not one of them. I sang a
few more notes. A few voices joined with
me and before it was over, the mourners were on their feet, dancing and I knew,
at that point, that I had done what Lola needed me to do.
My dreams were not frequent, but they
kept me busy nonetheless. Ethan was my
age and I remember feeling shaken by his image in the mirror. He was polite, thanking me for coming – as if
I had a choice. “The grass is electric!”
Ethan exclaimed, “I finally feel alive!”
When I got home from school the next
day, my mother told me that Ethan’s car had veered off the road and ran head-on
into a tree; he had probably fallen asleep at the wheel. I knew then that I had to clean out his
locker. It was easy to get his locker
combination, telling the office lady I was his next-door neighbor. I bundled up his school work, marked with As,
and his art supplies, greatly used, and his notebooks filled with poetry that
seemed to be authored by someone who lived a lot longer than our 17 years. What I didn’t pass off to his parents were
the notes and ramblings and scribblings of a suicidal teenager who would have
killed himself sooner if he had thought his parents could have handled living
with that thought.
After moving to my own apartment, I
felt a lot freer to sleep at night.
Under my mother’s roof, I felt stifled.
I knew she placed no credence in my gift and if I tried in any way to
explain it to her, she quickly dismissed me mumbling about Lola’s far-reaching influence.
Soon after getting my very first phone
turned on, I received a call from a co-worker asking me to cover some of her
meetings that morning as her husband had suffered a stroke and was in the
hospital. Though I wasn’t close to her,
I did as she asked. On Wednesday of that
week, I dreamt of her husband. I had
never met him yet I knew that he was Coleen’s beloved. “The grass is like the warm sands of
Galveston between my toes,” he told me.
I woke with a start and at 4:30 that morning, I drove to the hospital
and sat with Coleen. I was with her when
he took his last breath. I was with her
when the nurse asked if he were an organ donor.
She looked at me for confirmation and I squeezed her hand and nodded my
head.
Embracing my gift came with a price,
though. In order to spare my own
feelings, I kept people at an arm’s length.
I chose to not date other than casually.
I never had children because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to bear
seeing one of them in the mirror. I kept
mostly to myself.
At my mother’s funeral, my cousin
Debbie asked about my dreams. She said
she’d heard mutterings and she wanted to know if I’d had a dream about my
mother. “Did you know she was going to
die?” I wrestled with answering her
honestly and laying the details of my dreams at her feet or just mumbling
something about not knowing and then excuse myself.
“The dreams don’t work that way. I don’t dream of everyone who dies. I only dream of those who have something they
want me to do. No. Something they need me to do. I didn’t
dream of my mother. She didn’t believe
my dreams had any validity, so I’m sure she needed nothing from me.” I didn’t feel compelled to explain how in
what ways I had helped those who had appeared in my dream. Sharing those acts with someone else felt like a betrayal.
“Did the people tell you before they
died they wanted you to do something for them?” she asked. I could clearly see that she was honest in
her questions. I answered her simply,
“No.”
Debbie continued to stay in touch
following my mother’s funeral. We met
often for lunch and spent Easter together.
In June of that year, I dreamt of Debbie. “The colors!
The breeze! The trees! The grass!
Oh…! The grass! The grass feels like a moss-covered rock in a
very shallow, cool stream.” It seemed as if she was almost delighted that she
had figured out how to appear in my dream.
I laughed at her enthusiasm.
After Debbie’s funeral, I met with her
only child – a beautiful 19-year-old college sophomore named Quinn who was
raised by her single mother to be independent and smart. My words came tumbling from my mouth, “Don’t
just box up your mother’s items,” I begged her.
“Especially her jewelry box. You
need her jewelry box.” Although, I
couldn’t tell her why.
That Christmas, I got a beautiful
Christmas card from Quinn. She explained
that Debbie had left the name and contact information of Quinn’s father in her
jewelry box. While still very
independent, Quinn had found her way into another family. “Thank you,” she wrote, “For sharing your
gift with me and with my mother.” It was
the first time I had officially been thanked.
I chalked up my excessive weariness to
age, to lack of personal relationships, to going to sleep full of anticipation
instead of relaxation and rest. It was
the fact that I had no “nearest relative” that concerned my doctor the most. He wanted to know who would drive me to and
from treatment. I told him I could take
care of myself. I always had. And my weariness continued.
It was after a very exhausting week of
treatment that I opted to discontinue.
“You’re giving up?” my doctor asked.
I could offer no reason as to why I needed to continue. My job was not dependent on me; anyone could
do it – in fact, a temp had been doing it with great success since my third day
of treatment. I had no immediate family
that would be overcome with grief at my passing. My friends, while concerned, would continue on
with their lives regardless of my existence. I simply was close with no one.
“Think about this,” my doctor
continued, “You’ve only been in treatment for six months. There are other methods we could try.”
I looked him square in the eye, and I shook
my head. I was tired. I was worn.
I was ready. My mind was set.
***
That fitful night began as any other
had the past ten days. I’d doze and then
I’d wake. And then I’d doze. And then I’d wake. The nurse was gentle. She’d wipe my face, which would wake me. She’d rub my hands and arms, which would help
me sleep. I heard her whispering a
prayer. With just my nurse by my side, I
finally found slumber…
…I looked into the mirror and found no
one there, not even a reflection of my own image. I dropped my gaze to my feet and found a
bridge. I took one step and then another
and another. I found myself grinning as
I approached the grass. Then I heard
myself giggle and with just two more steps, my feet touched the grass and I
laughed. I laughed loud and long. They were right. They were all right. Mrs. Briscoe, Lola, Debbie – all of them were
perfectly right. They all described to me exactly the way the grass felt under
my feet.
It felt beautiful. It felt comfortable. It felt inviting.
It felt like home.
