mentor

I dreamed about Connie for the first time since she died. We were in her garage, I think, or on her porch -- the in-between rooms blurred together into light, so that we could have passed easily from one place to the other. I imagine that she was wearing her jeans with hose and black flats, her big sweater. I think that's what she wore the last time I saw her, but I can't picture it for sure. I wish I could remember exactly, everything about every time I saw her, everything we said. (How tiresome, she would say about that, and she would laugh.)

The garage had big wood beams and dirty cardboard boxes full of clean books, and a sign that said No Hunting near the door to the kitchen. We were standing by the boxes, let's say. (Unless we were in the porch, and then we were next to the picnic table with the sea glass and shells in baskets and bowls, and I could see the weather stick that pointed up or down to indicate whether it would rain or shine.)

I said to her something about how I would have to stop being lazy and just finish the book. And she didn't say anything, nodded, maybe. It was the basic truth, maybe not that it's laziness, but that finishing the book is completely up to me.

And then maybe we worked a little, counted books in boxes or shifted boxes around. And I said,

"I miss you. I just miss you so much." Like I was letting go of some kind of pretense, admitting something simple, that again we both knew. It felt, in the dream, that I had just moved away, that she wasn't really gone. That I had chosen this.

She didn't say anything, but I could tell she was sympathetic. There was nothing to say, really, except, "I know."