Last night, I dreamt I went home again, and this time surprisingly, Ed was there. My scheduled visit was for one week, and when I realized Ed was home, I was so happy to be there for a full week and wanted to soak it all in… except, he didn’t really feel the same way. He was being moody and negative the entire week, making passive aggressive comments here, snapping at me over there. It was not fun at all.
When it came to the seventh day and I was packing my bag to leave, he said to me, “You must be really happy to be going back to New York.”
I was furious and let him have it. “Happy to be going back to New York? Happy to be going back to New York? I spent an entire week here with you, and you were being negative and annoying the entire time!” I yelled. “And now, I won’t be able to see you ever again! We wasted an entire week together!”
He was quiet for a moment and wrinkled his brow. Clearly, he felt confused. “What do you mean you’ll never see me again?”
My frustration was growing and growing. “What do I mean? I’m never going to see you again BECAUSE YOU ARE DEAD! You aren’t even alive! You aren’t even really here right now!!”
It was as though someone hit him over the head, and he finally understood the situation. He really wasn’t alive. He wasn’t human. He was just a spirit visitor pretending to be one of us. He perked up for a bit and said, “Okay, why don’t we go out together now, then?”
“Okay,” I responded. At least we could have an hour together alone and being seemingly normal without the watchful eye of our parents. And together, we left the house.
We’re almost at the three-year mark of his passing. He always manages to come back around this time, as though he thought that somehow, I’d manage to forget. Little does he know that I’ve never forgotten — in fact, that’s quite impossible, and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him and his eternal absence in my life. It doesn’t really matter where in the world I go or what current events are happening or what people I meet or how I may choose to ‘escape’ my reality — he’s always there in the shadows of my mind.