dreams after a suicide by delaney janus

I

in my first dream after his death i’m sitting in the living room and he’s standing in front of me. he’s smiling that specific grin he does right after he’s told a joke, as he waits for my laugh, which always comes. he’s trying to speak but he can’t, the air between us is too thick for the words to cut through. in place of speech, intense, almost oppressive frequencies of energy beam from him towards me, an enormous wave, formless but blaring chorus. it surges continuously, so much to communicate in its weeping vibrational rivers. the atmosphere is a livewire, tender and raw and ripped open because of the knowing between us, the knowing of what happened, what was being planned all this time, all revealed in entirety. all the while his smile remains, and i come to notice that it’s somewhat sheepish, as if the joke he told was at my expense. i suppose he’s scared i’m mad at him for what he’s done to us.

II

in the second dream he’s come back! right through our front door. we’re standing in the family room and there he is, my mom cries out in a joy so sudden it sounds like it could also be pain. i throw my arms around him. we’re not the type of siblings that hug often, but a week prior he’d hugged me after we’d gotten in a fight (i didn’t give him a portion of the fried rice i made) and there was still that characteristic tension in his shoulders. wherever he went to, it’s lifted now, and he’s come back!

III 

we’re sitting on the couch in the family room, all five of us, watching tv. it has happened, but it also hasn’t, because he’s here with us. he’s seated beside me, and wordlessly, as form of explanation, he shows me a sheet of paper. on it is written our names, one for each time we unknowingly prevented him from going through with it. mom dad delaney mom pj pj mom delaney delaney pj dad dad pj mom mom mom delaney (it continues on).

IV 

my mother often wryly jokes that if she’d known what he was going to do, she would have happily kept him chained to a bedpost for the rest of his life. in this dream we’ve done just that: he’s shackled in the mudroom. somehow he still finds a way. he teleports to the roof and jumps off.

V 

it’s about a week before christmas. its the fifth major day without him (his birthday, halloween, and thanksgiving all came before in quick succession, and pj has experienced the first birthday that will take him further and further away from nick’s age, with nick never catching up, the gap never closing in that cat and mouse way it always has.) i dream my favorite dream to date: i’m on the front lawn. it’s golden hour, and the trees lining the street are lush and autumnal. i look out and see him coming towards me in the distance, a speck of brown for his hair and red for his tshirt. he’s running. he was never a runner when he was alive, but now he is moving freely and coming towards home. i run out to meet him and he leads me. we hang a left and the scene is no longer our neighborhood, but somewhere i’ve never seen before. he takes me through an underpass, and we end up in a quaint little christmas shop, chock-full with kitschy ornaments and plastic evergreens, and golden golden light. there‘s a crowd gathered in the little store, not of customers but of partygoers. we dance and dance and laugh. it’s a christmas party! nick is the only one i recognize at the party, though they behave warmly and familiar with him. are these his friends in the afterlife? he did lead me– we are in his neck of the woods. i savor our visit, like sweet taffy melting on the tongue, and run back home alone. 

VI 

in the sixth dream he’s come back! he’s come back, and i’m running like mad around the house opening every cluttered drawer trying to find the damn slip of paper with her phone number on it. i need to call stephanie, my therapist, and tell her that it’s okay, that i don’t need her anymore, because he’s come back!

VII 

in this one, we go out for dinner, the five of us, to a restaurant that’s a subconscious amalgamation of some of my family’s frequent haunts– francesca’s, palm court, wildfire. sometimes nick wouldn’t come along to our family dinners out, or other things, like sunday botanic garden strolls and scenic lake shore drive drives, holiday gatherings, our vacation to colorado, his own high school graduation. it didn’t come from not wanting to, but a strange sort of blockage. an internal barrier. an inability. the secret battle within him: to participate in life. to not. but he’s come, he was able to make it. it’s the five of us. we wear nice clothes, we dine and chatter and laugh, and then we grab ice cream at baskin’s. we make a big occasion of it: we go inside instead of going through the drive thru, like usual. then we drive home. nick sits in the middle backseat, a spot that was usually mine as a child, as the youngest and the slightest and the girl. me, mom, dad, and pj get out of the car. nick stays. we stand in a semicircle around the car and wave, like the ritual of some sort of jolly scandinavian midsummer celebration. nick says his goodbyes, and he rises from the car in a cloud of shimmering green mist. we wave and wave as he drifts upward, a momentous sendoff to bring a close to a perfect visit.

IX 

it’s me and nick. we’re driving down palatine road, who knows the destination, but the windows are down, he’s behind the wheel, and we’re catching up, laughing at some new meme. it’s a foreign scene; nick never drove me anywhere in real life. he took a long time to get his license, and then he rarely used it. (he really didn’t leave the house a ton the last year of his life. sometimes i wonder why it never seemed that strange. maybe because we had so much fun, laughing and watching the news or south park and playing anything from 1v1 to spikeball to badminton to pingpong to just plain catch.) i take his driving the way i did his running: he’s gone somewhere that’s a good bit lighter, where it’s much easier for him to do the things he wants to.

X 

it’s funny what you remember. one night, at about 10:30, i rounded the corner into the dining room, and nick was hiding behind it, and he popped out, and i screamed such bloody murder my parents woke up and got mad at me. oftentimes when i round that corner the thought flits through my head: i don’t need to flinch anymore– he’ll never scare me again. in this dream i round the corner, and he scares me. in grief, more thoughts than you realize are iterations of longing.

XI 

i come downstairs into the living room. it’s dark in the house. the dogs are dozing peacefully on the couch, and i sit beside them and pet them tranquilly. he comes down shortly after me, doesn’t say anything, starts petting bailey. i joke that i didn’t know he’d come home because they didn’t bark and go crazy–they must have not missed him at college. he mumbles an answer. i can’t see his face–the lights are off, dressing him in shadow, but i still remember his far off look, like his mind was miles away. we sit in silence, and eventually i head into the kitchen to heat up my dinner. the whole summer he’d been following me around when i’d go to another room, hassling me and cracking jokes until i put down my book or closed my laptop and hung out with him. that’s why i went into the kitchen. i thought he’d follow me, like always. but he didn’t that time.

that one’s not a dream. it feels the least real, but it’s the only one that is.

XII 

i go to a psychic. it’s a standard palm reading, not a medium session, but she gives me one free question. there’s, of course, only one thing i could ever ask about. i give her the least amount of details–i know how psychics probe, i know about the barnum effect. i want a real answer. she tells me he’s at peace (would she tell me if he wasn’t?). she says she sees something with blue, something about the ocean. she knows i’m not getting any dreams anymore. she says it’s because i’m sleeping poorly (i am). like a phone call, the connection won’t go through. i need to sleep. tonight, i need to listen to the song that reminds me of him before i drift off, and he will visit me. 

i do it. he doesn’t. but i still believe her about the blue and the ocean. i still imagine him loitering around the boardwalk of ocean city maryland, the place that was my mother’s childhood vacation spot before it was our childhood vacation spot. i still picture him with my grandfather, cracking crabs.

XIII 

my mother has dreams too. less often than i do. people on forums say in these types of situations the deceased visits the mother less often. there’s an anger there that makes it difficult. in one of hers she opens his bedroom door, walks in on him as he’s preparing for the act. he looks at her, unspeaking. he shuts the door.