Death

I had a new death dream the other night.
Let me preface by saying that I have old one.  I have had it only a few times, but multiple enough to file it into the category of Reoccurring Dream.  The old one is quite simple and doesn't have a lot of detail: I am trying to breathe and it gets harder and harder until I finally take the cleanest, clearest, deepest breath I've ever had in my life, pulling in the darkness of space and the stars, the most expansive open I can imagine--and that's my death.  I have been reassured by this dream, felt it as a true and concrete experience, more than any faith or spiritual teaching, which, all in all, are great for contemplation but don't have the realism that this dream has had for me.  Trust in what you know.

So now I have had this other dream, and it's not as comforting.  I don't think it negates the first one; I still believe my death will happen very much like that.  Or my new life will begin, as it were.*  But, I have had another Death dream.  It merits remembering.
The new dream goes like this:
I am on my bed, on a cotton, cream colored comforter, much like the one I own in beige, and am dressed in a light weight hospital type gown of the same, one of the more lengthy stay type gowns, not tying and still slightly open in the back.  The room is devoid of my personal items though it may in fact be my room.  I think it is.  My head is shaved or I am bald.  There is no hospital type equipment except maybe a single I.V. and pole.  I can't feel any equipment connecting it to my arm though.  On the bed beside me is my white computer, open and playing through a slideshow of the photograhs from my life.  All of them.  Any Shannon has taken, any I remember or have in a book.  All the photographs I remember are playing through a cycle on the screen.  It's oddly comforting, to be reminded of these wonderful moments as I lay dying, to watch all the good things and remember them.  And I am comforted.  I am being slowly swallowed up in a similar kind of suffocation as the first dream, but more consciously.  And it's this consciuos that nags at me.  I feel myself slipping away and try to fight it, taking at last one comeback breath, but not The Big Breath.  Each time I go through this it feels like falling, like dropping off to sleep and recalling oneself only to slip back again.  I want to go, but at the last I lose my peace and grasp again for life.  Despite this obvious situation, and the happiness I derive from having my memories play kindly for me, so I can watch them as I die, I keep climbing back to Life.
Claude pushes past some people to enter my otherwise empty room and I let him curl up beside me, turning my face from the computer and kissing him repeatedly, as parents do with their children when they cuddle.  And I am suddenly terrified that I will finally slip away and he will wake up to a dead me, a mother cold and lifeless and he will be frightened too.   I don;t want this to happen to him, but I do not want to give up this last bit of time to hold him and feel his soft hair.  He is my boy and am breathing better beside him but it is now certain that I cannot outlast his sleep.
The dream ends without conclusion or resolution.

*Wouldn't that be cool?   The name for this existence is Life and the name for the next existence is Death.  The word Death is not an event but the next life.  However, being grounded in one existence, we hear only spotty and misleading information about the one to come after.  In Death, we'll probably hear tell of a thing equally as scary as Death was in Life.  I'll use this idea in a story sometime, so don't steal it outright, but if I've inspired you, go for it!  It seems like a cool idea to me.

Contra-indictated

Here's what's weird: in a new drug ad (1) for a medication called Uloric, recommended to treat Gout (2), my medication (3) was listed as one of those not to be taken before taking Uloric.  I immediately felt preferred, distinguished, famous (4).  Thousands of people heard the name of my medication!  And it wasn't just me.  My husband turned to look at me at the same time with the same look of singled-out surprise.

Here's why it's weird:
1.  I hate those ads.  They annoy me.  The side affects are often worse than the disease or condition they are proposing to abate.  Or they're just crazy.  Coma and Death are some of my favorite.  (Death!  As a symptom!  Huzzah.)  And, I've never felt any affiliation with the now-happy and no longer suffering people or their ailments.  Luckily, I not old enough (I guess) to have the particular condition, or tangently lucky, I have one of my own that I cope with just fine (a).
2. They still call it Gout?  I thought Gout was like Consumption or at the very least, had been vaccinated out of existence.  Coma and Death and Gout!
3. My medication is Imuran, generic name Azathioprine.  Azathioprine is the one that was mentioned.  Listen for it!
4. Why am I excited about about having my medication mentioned in the kind of t.v. advertisement that galls me?  (Gout and Gall!)
        a. I cope better than most Chron's patients--not of my own accord, mostly it's up to luck--and have had a better time of it than most from the very beginning.  So, go Azathioprine!  And keep on keeping on, body o' mine.
(Coma or Death!  Gout and Gall!)

I call upon Thee

A phrase today from a churchy-type service:
Yahweh, Allah, Gaia; Yemaya, Zeus, Kimet--I call upon thee, whose influence I need right now.

So.  We call upon the god whose traits we need to guide us in a particular moment or situation.  Not unlike the Greek gods and goddesses.  Baking?  Call upon Hestia.  Going into battle?  Athena, Aries or Artemis.  Love woes?  Well, you know.  So, in today's pantheon of monotheisms, do we still call upon a particular deity for the same reason?  The Christian god is merciful (now) and we pray for mercy for ourselves or that we may be merciful to others, and need a little help with that.  Or patience like Job, or various other purges and influences.  Judaism focuses on the Master of the Universe through whom all things flow.  These are monotheistic deities after all, they must encompass all the traits we will need.  Which means they are all basically the same.  So what, then, draws us to one religion versus another, if not a particular deity for its trait?
We grow up Christian and become Buddhist.  We grow up Catholic and become Atheist.  We grow up Agnostic and are Born Again.  I think the truth is that we still do seek out what traits we need.  As we grow, sometimes our faith grows with us (for all those Catholics who are still Catholic,) and for others, we grow into our faith, into our new god.  Or we find our faith in other places, still in light and kindness, but without name.
I guess the point, really, is only this: recognize, take notice, of the act of calling upon that thing which you need.  Are they not all equal in the asking?  Of course they are.  So just mark the action, understand that we do this, that we ask for whom we need by what we seek.  Focus not on the prayer, on the problem, but the simple act of the asking.