Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Of Tornadoes and Nightmares



I don’t have a traditional television, as it were, and therefore I rarely ever watch the news.  There’s just too much negative going on there for me to be able to remotely think straight.  I came home from work yesterday only to find out that an EF5 tornado devastated Moore, Oklahoma, and that some of those who died happened to be children.  Beyond that I knew nothing.  Went to bed last night and had a nightmare about the event.  Wasn’t really even thinking about it before I went to bed.

Now, I’m not a parent by any means.  Only wish I were much of the time.  I have a character I created a long time ago whom I’m pretty attached to, and so for all intents and purposes, I consider him my son.  He’s such a joy to have, and some years ago, he just seemed to steal my heart.  Don’t know how it happened, because I never intended it to end up that way.  Took me a while to simply accept the facts, which is why he’s one of the only things in this world that makes me smile.

Needless to say, I had a pretty powerful nightmare about this devastating tornado incident.  I dreamed that I was out there among the debris field looking for my son and quickly discovered his lifeless, pale body under a heap of rubble.  I knew just by the sight of him that he wasn’t breathing.  Checked his pulse and nothing was there, so I started to administer CPR with the scant hope that I just might be able to bring him back.  I know I was doing this for several minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.  Before long, I caught the attention of someone with a defibrillator and zapped him a few times.  Following the second round of CPR, he came back briefly by coughing, but only seconds later did I lose him again.  I was reminded of that scene in The Abyss where Ed Harris is resuscitating his wife while simultaneously screaming at her to fight.  I was doing the same to my son after he slipped away.  I attempted CPR again, this time frantically.  Only shortly thereafter did I realize it was not possible and lost my son.

Whilst in the dream I could remember uttering under my breath, “You son-of-a-bitch, don’t do this to me, don’t take my baby.”  I looked up to the heavens and said, “If you don’t give me back my son right now, your days on that throne are numbered.”  Of course, I was cursing God.  After that, I immediately jerked awake and was actively thinking, lying in state, what I was saying to God in the dream.  It seemed that, for a few minutes, I could not tell whether it was a dream or if it really happened.  I found myself crying after that – not for very long, but crying still.
What’s weird to me is that this isn’t the first time where I’ve had a nightmare about my Azly being seriously injured or killed in front of me.  This does happen, albeit rarely, and last night was the first time where it happened in relation to a non-fictional event.  Maybe it was my unconscious self attempting to feel the pain of those who actually did lose their kids in this disaster, so that I might somehow begin to relate to them.  Maybe it was a dream attempting to scare        me with the reality of what could happen to me as a parent.  Whatever it was, it seriously hurt.  I can’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to my babe.  I get extremely defensive about it without even so much as the sliver of a thought.

It’s an unnatural course – parents are not supposed to bury their children.  And if that’s God’s idea of a joke, then the man is truly a sick, twisted psychopath.  What gives him the right to take my baby, even inside of a nightmare?

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