Intricately Kareberry

Nightmares

It seems like I always have many moments in my day where I have free time to think about her. I think about her everyday. I see her in my memories of photos I've seen, I can even picture scenes from her funeral so vividly from my mind. It's not that I want to, but I just can't help it. I don't really need to try, the memories just pop into forethought. I can still see her mother as I'm staring at her back from the end of the room. Looking towards the front of the room where the casket is, her mother's back is facing the rest of us, you can even see that if there was room in that casket, she'd jump in as well. Still, putting myself as far away as possible didn't really help because I couldn't just sit and not do anything. I had to be that extra hand, while my mother was being strong for the family, I had to pick up everything else she couldn't take care of.

I had to help take stuffed toys out of the casket because her father wanted it as something to remember her by. I had to put money paper into the casket as some form of Chinese tradition. I watched as I stood next to her mother, as she was holding those huge inscent sticks as if it was the very soul of her daughter, with trembling hands. Then in the crematorium, sitting up close and personal with her brother, we could hear her mother in the other room not wanting to leave even when we knew the casket was already in the furnace. I wanted to be as much help as possible, but I'm also wondering when these memories will eventually fade. It scares me a lot. On one hand, I remember being at the funeral and wishing she would just sit up out of some miracle and call out for her mother. On the other hand, it would probably be everyone's worse nightmare except to her mother.

I even surprised myself when I offered to go with them to the buddhist temple where her "soul" was supposed to go and rest. The huge inscent stick was supposed to last the 30-45 min car ride, and it wasn't supposed to go out. If it went out, we would have lost her soul along the way, or something superstitious like that. Then along the way, the ashes from the inscents burnt holes on the carpet in the car. We even had to listen to that buddhist chanting non-stop. I remember that small machine that plays this constant buddhist chanting and you were supposed to turn it on and keep it on because it acted as a form of soothing music for the dead, and I guess for those around who believed in it. Unfortunately, it always gave me nightmares. The chanting is hypnotic, and when you pair it with the experience of first hearing it at the time of your grandfather's death, it doesn't really have any form of soothing effect at any point.

But I guess these buddhist practices do bring some form of comfort. It was comforting for her mother to have so many things she needed to do in the belief that she was doing it all for her daughter. It was comforting to know that even after death, she was well taken care of each day by buddhist monks who would chant songs and give her company. Comforting to her mother that she could visit her whenever she wanted. That's why as soon as we got to the buddhist temple, there was a sigh of relief and a little bit of comfort when the family saw the little girl's "soul place", in other words a plaque with her daughter's name on it, similar to a grave stone. I guess when you're told by the monk that your daughter's soul is free to roam where ever she's happy, but she'll always have the temple as home is comforting if you think your daughter just moved out of the house. The difference is that her daughter is still reachable, still here, always here, and only a 30 min ride away to visit.

Then to me, just brings more unwanted dreams. I can't even remember my dreams, but they keep me sleeping. It's almost like I can't wake up until I'm done dreaming and there's no more to dream. I remember my dream for a brief moment when I wake up, and almost automatically I drift off again. I remember before the incident I used to dream of pools of water. Right after Chinese New Year started I remember very vividly a dream that I had, I couldn't forget it, it was one of those dreams I'll always have in my mind. I remember telling Alex about my dream, I still remember it now, but I wouldn't have thought of it if it weren't for the funeral.

I was dreaming that I was in a large warehouse of sofas. Only these weren't normal looking sofas, they were very modern and interesting, with interesting shapes, not at all comfortable to sit on, all made of hard plastic. They were lined by forming small rooms like the layout of an office with dozens of cubicles. In each cubicle were three slides of different height. The odd thing is, the whole warehouse was filled with water. You couldn't walk, you had to swim until you got to the slide. The slides are the the size of the ones at the playground, but they looked like those slides from a "bean bag" slide at the carnival. Each slide had a sprinkler overhead. There were lots of people. Everyone was trying to pick a place to sit, whether it was on the slides or on the sofa. I was swimming, first to a slide, but then for some reason I didn't want to be seen, and then I had to swim all the way far from the entrance of the warehouse to a very uncomfortable sofa facing away from the door. All of a sudden the water was gone. You could walk, and as I was walking, where one side had colourful plastic softas, the other side had antique wooden chairs of every style. The freakiest part was that the walls of shelves on the side of the wooden chairs were lined with hundreds and hundreds of wooden dolls. Everybody looking at the chairs were now staring at the wooden dolls. Then, the shelves started to shake. Nothing else in the room was shaking, only the shelves and the dolls on the shelves. The dolls started to shake off the shelf and crash on to the floor. That's when everyone started running out through the glass sliding doors of the warehouse.

Thankfully, I don't have this dream anymore. But I do have other dreams that I'm glad I don't remember. I just know that when I'm sleeping and dreaming that it's very disturbing and I can't seem to get out of it. I really hope these memories fade soon, cuz work doesn't really seem to help keep me busy. The more work I get, the more I do worse because I can't focus. I brought the wrong set of powerpoint slides to the day of my presentation. I had to get my group members to fill in the missing slides cuz I didn't bring the updated version. If you know me or worked with me before, that never happens. I think I'm losing my mind a little. I don't even know if getting away will help at all, or maybe getting away would just give me more free time and an empty mind for thoughts like these to resurface.

posted by Kareberry @ 3:24 p.m.