Death of the New Me

I had a dream that I had one week to live.

Yes, dreams are misfiring of neurochemicals in a brain that are otherwise supervised by those upper lobes we’ve evolved to suppress them—at least during the waking hours. But sleep opens the gates. Specifically, the sodium gates that evoke action potentials and synapses, flooding neuroreceptors who won’t even see them coming.

Have you ever tried to remember the details of your night’s dream? Have you ever struggled to reel back the little bits that emerge again so your upper brain can laugh at them? You can actually feel the synapses reconnecting. But they are weak and soon ignored.

Upon awakening, it’s a blur. And unimportant.

But for some reason, this dream wasn’t unimportant. It wasn’t so much lucid dreaming as it was existential dreaming. I was going to die in a week, impregnating my conscience with this realization as fact.

I was terrified.

A week is a sizable chunk of time. It’s enough time to make a list of the bank accounts, passwords, and the million little things loved ones would need after I was gone. It was also enough time to make peace with God. Enough time to reconnoiter and reconnect with the important things in life.

I rose above anger and laughed at how someone cutting me off in traffic seemed to discombobulate my morning. Or at how someone taking credit for my idea seemed to provoke an afternoon of angst. Or at how I felt it important to win the point with my wife in an argument. Or at how upset I became over one of my children breaking something of mine.

Some thing.

Like things matter.

I waxed eschatological. Anyone who hit me up on the street—the homeless, the jobless, the incapacitated—I rolled off a fiver from the roll of five-dollar bills I put in my pocket just for this very purpose. My goodness, were I not to die in a week and did this the rest of my life, how much money would I end up giving away? A thousand dollars? Two? Is that so much a hit over a lifetime in a life that now seemed so important while the money didn’t? And compared to the one getting a few bucks who had no bucks? It’s piss money. I’d never feel it.

I became the generous lover—to my wife, children, family, and friends.

And everyone noticed.

I was better. And I was getting even better with each passing day of my last week on Earth.

I never told my wife about my dream. I didn’t want to worry her or—more likely—make her wonder about me. But she liked the new me. She was so happy that week, and that made me so happy, since I defined my happiness by hers—and by ours, which is the way it should be. The way love should be. Even my children began to act out of some mysterious, undefined allegiance to their paternity.

At work, I gave out compliments where deserved but had something nice to say to even those less deserving. I realized that I didn’t have to give up much to make a win-win out of any situation, any interaction or relationship, or even any disappointment in persons or things.

I took great solace in the words of C.S. Lewis, who wrote, in his “The Weight of Glory,”

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations —these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

I lived that week as my immortal self, co-existing with all the other immortals. That’s a special place in which to dwell while you’re still alive. Such a sensibility is like living outside time, in eternity. As it turned out, religion didn’t seem so silly to me.

On the last day of my epochal week, I went to sleep after kissing my wife and children. I had made them so happy. I was happy. I was ready—not to finish things, but to embrace the continuity to come. I didn’t dream that night.

But I woke up at the usual time the next morning. I dressed for the day. I navigated cut-throat traffic. I went to work.

So, it really had been just a dream.

Silly me. I’m glad I didn’t tell my wife or anyone else. This is because I didn't want to pay the price for believing something so silly. I’m so glad I didn’t have to hear things like, “Oh, now that you’re not really going to die, you’ve decided you don’t have to be so wonderful anymore.” And I’m glad I’m gonna die with a couple of thousand dollars I wouldn’t have after handing out all those fivers.

I suppose I could have continued the noble routine, living life as the new me—the better me. But such dedication is a mindfulness that is exhausting. When it comes right down to it, you have to live. And life is just too damned busy.