Dragic Magic

A while ago, I wrote a response to an old NPR prompt asking about what you believe; I made the essay into a graphic essay, which I can’t find right now (if I do, I’ll post it later). But I came across the text of the essay, and I felt like posting it here. Hopefully it’s at least interesting. It got published in the end of the year paper under the headline “Mortified by Mortality,” which pissed me off. But oh well. It’s not like I ever gave it a title.

——————————————————————————————

I do not often remember dreams, and when I do they are often too jumbled to make sense of them. But I remember one dream quite clearly. It was about my grandfather, and it began with me standing in front of his hospital bed. It was not a memory – I was not a six year old who didn’t understand my grandfather was dying of stomach cancer, I was a teenager, running to the bed to speak to him before he was again lost to me forever. Before I got there, the dream shifted, and it was me in the bed, staring out at a horrifyingly clean hospital room, feeling someone hold my hand and hearing people whisper as my vision faded into darkness, and with it the sound and the feeling until there was absolutely nothing. I ceased to exist.
I have never been more afraid than when I woke up from that dream. The universe had crawled into my skull and whispered “You are going to die!” and it was not a request. I could not say no.
This is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
When I ran to the shower and had its warm waters rushing over my face as I tried to forget that horrible sensation of not being, my thoughts were drawn, unwillingly, to a line from Blade Runner: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” No matter how much I may have wished it, I would never be eternal. My body is mortal, and so is the mind it houses. But those moments do not have to be lost. They will be lost to me of course, when I end, but they do not have to be contained to me. Experiences can be shared, ideas disseminated.
I believe the greatest good I can do before I go into the dark is to share, to reach out and touch the lives of others. This does not mean I seek no time for myself. Even if it will be lost, to memory or to time, the moment where I sit on the steps, contemplating the cars whizzing by, the pedestrians strolling past, the wind teaching the trees to dance, has a merit all its own. But to reach out to other lives, and help them over an obstacle, prod them toward a goal, or simply share that bond of mutual existence, and to be pulled, prodded, and acknowledged in turn is wondrous to me. Perhaps this is why I love to write, as it creates half of a connection that will last long after I shuffle off this mortal coil.
When I close my eyes, I can remember that dream about my grandfather. I can remember his intense eyes, and how he taught me to look people in the eye, and to color inside the lines. And I hope that one day, someone will remember me.