I had a dream Labor Day morning, not anything nearly as inspiring as Martin Luther King’s, but one that certainly went down in my journal of weirdness.  I was in a college dorm-like setting, but it was in the old funeral home in Savannah.  (That’s because a good deal of work has been done there lately, so I’ve been in and out more than usual.)  We were preparing for an “American Ninja Warrior” marathon party.  (That’s because I had watched it with my grandsons the night before.  My son even interrupted my Lego car construction with Anderson because I really needed to see Neil “Crazy” Craver.  I will admit the gold shorts and body paint were an interesting combination.  And he made it through Stage 1 which was impressive.)

In the course of preparing for our guests, I was cleaning my room when I found something kinda crusty on the fitted sheet of my bed.  Closer inspection revealed that it was a circle of dried, squished maggots.  Stay with me here.  I moved the top sheet and found a whole host of living, extremely wiggly ones.  (That’s because a few days earlier my little Kathryne had killed a fly in bookkeeping, on Claire’s printer no less.  I happened to come back just as she was preparing to dispose of the carcass and she called me out into the parking lot to view the remains.  You know those spiders that you step on and zillions of little baby spiders run in all directions and you start doing a tap dance trying to kill them all?  Well, sometimes flies have larva that do exactly the same thing, only they don’t run.  They fall off the flyswatter onto the asphalt . . . while you stand there and watch.  Claire, if you have any greasy looking spots that appear on something you print, you might want to discard it and try again.  I’m sure it will stop . . . eventually . . .).  So I wadded up the sheets and threw them away.

Halfway through the marathon I realized I had forgotten to get anything to eat—and what’s a party without food?  So I hurried out the door and to the nearest grocery which was Foodland—which in real life isn’t there anymore but in my dream still existed—and which was closed because it was after 8:00 P.M.  My next option was Kroger on Pickwick Street so I ran into the store, only to find there were no shopping carts.  When I asked the clerk where they all were, she told me they didn’t know then followed that with, “Don’t you have any pockets in your pants?”

So I’m running through the store trying to find everything I need and hauling it all around in my arms because nothing would fit in my pockets when I came across a lone buggy.  I quickly confiscated it, piling my produce into it, only to find that it had one of those fronts that the cashiers would raise to remove your purchases—a front that was up and wouldn’t go back down.  So everything I’m putting in the buggy is being scattered about the store as I continue shopping . . . which means I have to frantically keep going in circles picking up the same stuff over and over because it just keeps falling out of the buggy.  And then (thank goodness) the alarm on my phone went off and my nightmare came to a grinding halt.

Now, what in the world does all that have to do with the price of eggs in China?  Or for that matter, with death?  Absolutely nothing, except for that part about not being prepared.  In my dream I wasn’t prepared for everyone who was coming over for my “American Ninja Warrior” marathon—and being unprepared rates right up there as one of my top ten worst fears.  In real life we are rarely ever prepared to permanently let go of someone who means the world to us, no matter how much time we have been granted, and unfortunately, no alarm is going to sound that banishes fantasy in the wake of a more pleasant reality.  That difficulty in letting go can send us running in metaphorical circles, unable to focus, unable to function, unable to progress through life.  I promise you, that’s normal.  That’s expected.  That’s o.k.  Eventually life finds its new normal; adjustment begins, the mental lapses subside, and you can start to move forward one step at a time.  And if that doesn’t happen or you feel the need for a little professional support, we have a grief counselor who would welcome the opportunity to help you with your journey.  His name is David, his services are free, any of our locations can give you his phone number, and you owe it to yourself to give him a call.  Life is too short to let being unprepared spoil the rest of the party.

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