Another Dream

 It happened again early this morning.

He was there. He was more there than he ever is in my memories now, because when I try to remember him my brain immediately goes to his dead body. His feet suspended above the basement floor. His jeans hanging loosely. His hands by his sides, unmoving.

My brain doesn't let me go to other places. It doesn't let me remember how his body felt when it was alive, before that day. July 18th, 2017. The warmth of those memories was Asphyxiated. By him, from him, from me, from our children.

But in my dream he was there, more alive than he ever is in my clouded conscious thoughts. His height was the right height, and his expressions were his expressions, and his voice was his voice. 

He was there with me.

We were in a home that was not ours, an old home, and he was being paid to paint a light yellow glaze over floral wallpaper to make it look a little nicer and more modern and brighter. He was taking the job very seriously, painting meticulously, concentrating on covering each spot on each wall. 

He didn't want to talk to me.

[Did I mention that outside the house there were wolves walking around? There were wolves everywhere, I could see them when I looked out the window - they were just little dots moving on the hills in the distance, but I knew instinctively that they were wolves. In my dream I knew the wolves were sad.]

As he painted the walls, I asked him to talk to me. I begged him to please open up and talk to me, but he pretended not to hear me. He was concentrating so hard on washing the walls with paint.

I knew he was mad at me, so I left the room but I stayed in the hallway just outside and I kept checking in on him, in that room full of yellow glazed flowers. He then said he got instructions to paint the ceiling green, and he got up on a chair, and as soon as he stood up on it I  yelled at him to stop, and he looked me right in the eyes and said "what, are you afraid I am going to kill myself again?" 

I said yes. 

I needed him to get down. I thought he was teasing me, because he was angry at me, but I couldn't figure out if he was angry at me for bothering him while he was painting, or if he was still angry at me for leaving him and if he was still blaming me for his suicide.

I didn't know if he wanted me to stay or go. I didn't know which one, and he wouldn't tell me. He was silent. He was painting the walls in silence while the sad wolves moved slowly around on the hills nearby.

I woke up from this dream and it was daylight. I woke up and I was mad at myself for leaving the dream, and I cried, and 14 hours later I am still crying, because I feel like I betrayed him and left him again just by waking.