So I’m in Hartford, CT on a layover right now which has a way of taking me back in time. I’ve only been here twice before. The first was the night I learned about Dean’s death. The second was on the 6 month anniversary after. And then there was last night. And although there is uneasiness to this place, it’s also sacred in some sort of strange way as it is neutral territory where my sword of life was set down and my white flag raised high in surrender of my existence. Life as I once knew it changed here and will never be the same.
Last night upon arriving to the airport I felt a sense of presence. I saw billboards that spoke to me: a feather at the door’s entrance to the hotel, even leaves on pictures all over the hotel lobby in reminder of one of my favorite poems how leaf by leaf our burdens fall. As I went to sleep, this time in a different hotel than the first, I took note of my surroundings. They were the same as here I was in a similar white painted room with white sheets, a white ceiling, lying on one of the two queen sized beds with my phone charging on a nightstand in between, remembering the call that changed my world.
In bittersweet comfort I drifted to sleep replaying the words of that call. “No, he’s dead.”
I awoke a couple times to visions of flowers and then it happened. I saw Dean Blixt in my dreams. Twice. He came to give me a message!
At 8:47 this morning I awoke from my dream. In it I was rescuing dogs that got left at the side of the road by a green Ford pickup and as I was heading outside, I saw Dean wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt in an unfinished basement doing laundry. I asked if he was ok and he said “Yeah, with the cockroaches”.
When I asked if he was in Heaven, he told me “You’ve got it all wrong!” I thought….hmm…interesting! Holding my hands, he then said “What you’ve got to do is Pray, Pray, Pray!”
He was saying this almost as if he couldn’t stress it enough. Then as I fell back to sleep, Dean entered another dream. This time I asked “Do you like Heaven?” He said “Yes, but it gets kind of boring.” But he smiled and said “It is nice and peaceful”. When I asked why was it boring? he said “Because people aren’t coming here as much. They don’t believe. They lost faith.”
As I woke to my phone ringing, I realize in these times now more than ever, as death takes toll, we must hold onto Hope. And even if our perceived Heaven is all wrong as we are in the dark our darkest days might be yet to come but in the end there is light that shines even in our dark basements with the cockroaches.
Keep the Light on! And as Dean says…Pray!…Pray! Pray!
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