4 Dimensions

I had a dream again last night about Duane. He was alive, of course, otherwise maybe that wouldn't have been the focal point of my dream. It was like normal, only halfway through seeing him the first time in a while, I remembered at one point that I thought he was dead and trying to remember all the things I had wanted to say to him when I thought he WAS dead was difficult. I did at least remember that I had to tell him what his new email password was, since I had hacked it when I believed him dead.

Instead of making me upset, like dreams where I see him normally do, It just made me think differently about his death. I was a little jealous of all the Christians at his funeral getting comfort from thinking that he exists, in some form, in heaven. When they talked about he and his brother in heaven pulling jokes and laughing, it just made me envision some gross puppeteer of Duane's body moving him around. Needless to say, I wasn't comforted by the funeral.

But lately, I've been thinking that he DOES still exist, as much as anyone like Shakespeare or Abraham Lincoln exists. He exists in time. Three months and 4 days ago, he existed. Twenty-four years ago, he existed. We all die, and still, we all exist. I know, countless times, when I read about someone in history, I always imagine them alive, and rarely sit and realize they're dead. So, Duane, though not existing in THIS time period, exists none-the-less. I have emails, and letters, and memories, and pictures. He EXISTS, just maybe not in this dimension (the fourth one). Physicists say that all the time, that time is just a concept. Something to that effect.

An acquantance told me today that he lost his friend. But what caught me off-guard was that he was mentioning all the things going wrong in his life. His friend happened to make the list. When my friend died, it felt like the end. I'd been having a pretty bad week, but this...my friend's death...it wasn't close to being added into the same equation as my sister trying to leave her abusive husband and leaving her daughter with me while she went to gamble at the casino. It was distracting and depressing to be sure, but I would never add him to my laundry list of bad things I was going through when it happened.

Which leads me to a point I considered shortly after it happened. Friend is a very relative term. To him, it was someone he sort of knew, and who had eventually married his cousin. To me, it was someone who I'd had a crush on for years, who I stayed with in high school when I was homeless and my mom was in jail, who turned his back on me and made me feel worthless, who I hated for four years after high school, who tried to find me to apologize, who DID apologize, who I talked to every day, who saw right through me, who let me take his virginity, who wrote me letters while I was away last summer, who was my kitchen helper and cut the vegetables just like I like them, who was my future business partner.

Last Friday was the three month anniversary of his death. I cried for so long it seemed while I was in Amarillo. I was there for a school workshop for critiquing theater performances, but I felt really disconnected and separate. But it's hard for me to hide how I feel, but there was another girl there whose brother committed suicide 7 years ago, and the other girl whose cousin died 3 years ago. The one who lost her brother said that death is a universal gatherer. She was saying that death is the one thing that everyone can relate to if they've been through it. I'm sure she said it more elegantly, but to be sure, the death of a loved one is the hardest thing to go through.

I know that if my twin died, I couldn't go on. Even before I'd experienced death, my sister had a teacher she told me about. She found out my sister was a twin and would go on and on about her twin that had died. She mentioned it a lot during my sister's classes. We joked about it uncomfortably because we both knew that would be us some day. The idea is unbearable. To have someone you can communicate with without words. She is so much a part of my everyday life without having to see or talk to her, that going on without her would seem blasphemous.