In this dream, I am the one everyone believed was dead. Chris was alive and well. He was the one who had moved on with a new partner. I was the one that came back from where ever, back from being missing in action. Chris was overjoyed to see me. We kissed, hastily had sex and then it was Chris with the dilemma. He kind of in a blurred way had just cheated on the woman he was partnered to with the wife he had thought was dead. While he figured things out, I went on roadtrip and found myself driving through a torrential downpour. Water rushed down the side of the road in a flash flood. Cows floated by and the road flooded. I made my way to the top of a steep embankment, ditching my vehicle. The rain changed to ice and snow and I had to abandon the car. I ended up sliding down the embankment, the cold and ice burning and tearing the skin on my hands I went. When I reached the bottom, I looked up to a perfect Fall scene, a landscape of tree covered mountains with colors of green, gold and red.

I woke up, but every time I went back to sleep I went back to being the one who had died. I’ve had this dream so many times, but in reverse. Chris is the one who’s been missing in action and I am the one to make the choice, that is really no choice at all. We both know the choice is always him. Then I’m left with the consequences of that choice and cleaning up the mess it forces to me make. It was so strange to be on the other side of this, to see him having to choose and deal with consequences of choices. Now we both have a life littered with broken hearts and hurt feelings. This feels validating some how, like Chris now knows what it feels like to navigate the complexity of relationships, how we build a maze around our losses.

One day, this body will be a corpse.

I used to think of my heart as a broken vessel, hastily patched together with pieces missing. Now I know that if you open my heart, you will see an intricate labyrinth with new paths looping around the old dead-end ones. In a way, I was the one who died or at least a version of me died with Chris. While his illness and death were quick, mine was slow and painful. I’ve had to let go of how I identified myself. I’ve had to let go of a way of life. My rebirth into this new version of myself has been equally slow and painful. The building of new paths has been like sliding down that snow and ice covered hill, bruising, burning and scrapping skin as I go. Is this new version of myself fully formed? For now. I have entered a new season of life at least. See above where I’ve entered into a season of color.

People recover from natural disasters. There will always be memories and trauma from the time the tornado took the house or the car was washed away in a flash flood, but there will be new homes, new cars. That kind of trauma is the reason why I continue to dream of a dead man. It’s the brain playing tricks on me or just reminding me that my house or car was different then. The labyrinth in my heart has new twists and turns. The landscape changes, but supports new growth. That ancient banyan tree in Maui has new green leaves sprouting up through the chard bark, proof that we can survive disasters.

We are resilient and ever changing.