He lay there, wide awake, thinking, before turning over to look at the clock. It was 5am, according to the display. He hadn't had this dream in almost nine years. He thought he was over this, but something must have provoked it. There was no use in trying to go back to sleep. Knowing that sleep wouldn't come, he went downstairs to start a pot of coffee. The beep emitted by the coffeemaker as he pressed the button, reminded him.
He could still see the machine with the little blips that the nurse had told him was his mother's heartbeat. He loved the sound because it meant she was still there, she hadn't left him. Shane's mom, Theresa Catalano's best friend, had taken him to the hospital everyday for nearly two weeks and she was with him when Theresa died. During these visits, he would talk to his mother, like he did everyday, telling her about what had happened at school, asking her to wake up, praying for her. She had taken him to church every Sunday. He went to Sunday school and she would talk to him excitedly about making his first communion. It never happened, though. She'd died when he was seven and he was supposed make communion the following spring. He hadn't prayed much since she died. He didn't exactly resent God for taking her, he was just angry that he'd been left behind.
He went back upstairs, brushed his teeth and shaved, but he was somewhere else the whole time. He remembered like it was yesterday, he had been telling Theresa about the boy at school who had called him stupid because he was still struggling with spelling and had turned the letters around again. Theresa always knew how to make him feel better. She would reassure him and tell him that he wasn't stupid; God had given him the ability to see things differently, that's all. Only this time, as he was telling her what happened, the blips on the screen went a little crazy. He didn't know what it meant, but he had a feeling that it wasn't good. He went to the door and called for Shane's mom. Her face went white when she saw what was happening. She ran to the nurse's station and back to the room. Her reaction confirmed his fears. He was crying and begging Theresa to wake up. The machine went into one, steady, prolonged beep. His eyes went wide and he couldn't breathe. He looked up at Shane's mom, "what does that mean? What's happening?" Doctors and nurses flooded the room, shouting, "She's coding!" "Crash cart!" Stat!"
Shane's mom grabbed him and pulled him close to her. She was hugging him and telling him it would be alright; trying to convince herself as much as him.
"Clear!" One of the doctors yelled and everyone moved back several paces.
His mother's body jumped in a way that was completely unnatural. He was swept out into the hallway, the door closing behind them. When it opened again, a few minutes later, he knew. No one had to say a word. He was good at reading faces and body language. He'd learned to watch his parents' faces very closely. The signals he read in their faces told him when he needed to hide and when he needed to get out and run down the block to Shane's house.
He turned the knob in the shower, letting the hot water run, steaming up the bathroom. Soon he found himself enveloped in a fog. He adjusted the water and stepped into the shower. As the water poured over his head, he closed his eyes and let the memories come. He'd stopped fighting them years ago.
He was sitting in the church, staring at the casket. Theresa was beautiful, even lifeless and uncharacteristically pale, she was beautiful. Someone sang, his aunt did the eulogy, and Shane's mother read a passage from the Bible. He couldn't remember the song, his aunt's words or the scripture reading, because he didn't hear it. All he could hear was his mother singing to him. He had inherited his musical talent from her. She played the piano and she had the most beautiful voice. From before he was born, she'd make up songs and sing them to him. He tried to write them all down once, after she died, but he couldn't remember the words.
Every time these memories came to mind, he thought of his father. They hadn't spoken in more than ten years and that was fine with him. In that last encounter, he was finally able to tell the man just what he thought him. He had become a good man despite his father's constant prophesying to the contrary, despite the lack of support, despite the abuse. They say the best revenge against your enemies is to live a good life. He had heard this somewhere and it became his goal to have a life his father would envy. He'd done it. He had proven wrong all of the people who said he wouldn't amount to anything. Here he was so many years later, a father himself, though nothing like his own father. Today, Nick would make his First Communion. He figured that's what had triggered the dream.
He hated the fact that the memory of someone he had loved so much was overshadowed by the memory of someone he had spent his whole life hating. It really was hatred he felt for the man. Maybe that would change one day, but today was not that day. As far as he was concerned, his father should burn in Hell for all eternity for the things he'd done. The things he had caused to happen.
Theresa had been struck down by a car as she ran out into the street to get away from her abusive husband. She'd never regained consciousness. He saw the whole thing and blamed his father for her death. When she died, the drinking started, and shortly after, the beatings. It was guilt and the fact that he knew that his father killed her, maybe not directly, but because of his actions, Theresa was dead. Having a living reminder of the single most heinous act of your life could make one somewhat ill-tempered, he supposed. He wished he could just erase his father completely from his mind and hold fact to the memory of his mother.
God, he missed her. There was so much to tell her, so much she never got to see. He wondered what she would think of Angela and Nick. Would she have liked Patty? Angela often teased him about the relationship he shared with her mother. Patty reminded him of Theresa. They didn't look a thing alike, and as far as he knew Patty wasn't musically inclined. That thought made him laugh out loud because accompanied it was accompanied by the image of Angela looking absolutely stricken by her mother singing Happy Birthday to him on his 18th birthday, all those years ago in their house in Three Rivers. No, it wasn't a physical resemblance that reminded him of his mother, it was the way that Patty looked at him and cared for him; the way she had always believed in him. He took a minute to thank God for sending these women into his life.
He dried off and threw on a t-shirt and a pair of pants. He could smell the coffee; it was calling him. He sat on out on the deck, watching the sun come up. There was something amazing to him about sunrises and sunsets, the changing of night to day and back again. It was like a minor miracle everyday. As he sat, enjoying the solitude of this moment he allowed himself to replay the dream.
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven
It was the same every time. In the dream, he was seven again, standing on a white sand beach. He could hear the ocean and then he saw her. She was barefoot, dressed in a beautiful white sheath, with her long dark hair cascading down her back, blowing in the ocean breeze. She was singing. The image always left him breathless.
Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven
I'll find my way, through night and day
Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven
As he approaches her, he can see his own hand extended before him, reaching for her. She turns and looks at him, her head tilted a little to one side. He recognizes her eyes as his own. She's smiling at him. As he gets closer to her, almost within reach of her, her expression changes and a single tear runs down her face, then she disappears and he's back in his room in Three Rivers.
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven
He was ten when he first had the dream. He'd been thinking about her a lot, having just learned that he was going to be left back and knowing that his father would use this to torture him, not that he needed an actual reason to do so; it was a bonus His father would call him stupid and belittle him and then he'd wail on him. At ten, he was already so tired of it that he swore he'd fight back once he had a little size on him. He'd made good on that promise just five years later and while it made the abuse stop, it did little to make him feel better.
Anticipating the berating and beating he knew he'd get once his father saw his report card, he took comfort in what he'd learned in Sunday school, that he would one day see his mother again in heaven, but then he had the most frightening thought. What if when he got to heaven she didn't recognize him? What if she didn't know who he was? He had changed so much in the three years since she'd died, how would she know him as an adult? At that moment, he felt utterly alone in the world. That's when the dream came to him.
Nine years earlier, when Angela became pregnant with Nick, he was having the dream almost every night. He'd wake up sobbing and for the longest time, he wouldn't tell her what the dream was about. He just kept telling her that he couldn't remember. After a few weeks of this, she began to think that he was dreaming about something terrible happening to her and the baby and it had begun to unnerve her. She tried to get him to talk about it but he refused. He had come so far in the years that they'd been together, but the dream would cause him to revert to the monosyllabic responses and vague expressions that dominated their interactions in the early years of their relationship.
Angela's mother had always had a way with him so, during a visit, Angela asked Patty to talk to him. When Patty asked him about the dream, it was as if she'd opened a floodgate. His grief was overwhelming. He had become so expert at quelling his grief that when he finally opened up, there was an outpouring that even he hadn't expected. The man fell completely apart. When he was finally able to speak, he asked her a question, "Do you think there are tears in heaven?"
She was confused by the question and could offer no response beyond asking him what he meant. He told her about the dream, about how he'd been so young when Theresa died that he didn't think it was possible for her recognize him in his adult form. Patty hurt for him. To carry that kind of pain for all those years had to have been pure torture. It explained so much about who he was when she'd met him. Why he would run hot and cold, how he could shut down and disconnect so easily. It was the only way he could have survived it.
He stood looking out of the living room window, tears streaming down his face. She went to him and put her arms around him. Taking his face into her hands, wiping away his tears, she spoke.
"Jordan," her voice was breaking, "she's your mother; she would know you anywhere."
A peace washed over him and a weight he wasn't even aware he carried with him lifted instantly. He hadn't had the dream again until now, only for the first time, it had ended differently. This time, she took his hand in hers and said something to him.
"There are no tears in heaven, Jordan. I love you. "
She faded away, with a smile on her face and the wind blowing through her hair, singing. When he woke, he found himself in his bed, with his wife, a million miles from his bed in Three Rivers.
Beyond the door Cause I know I don't belong
There's peace I'm sure.
And I know there'll be no more...
Tears in heaven
Here in heaven
He was lost in his thoughts when he heard a voice behind him. He turned toward the sound and looking back at him were a pair of eyes three generations in the making. The child looked so much like her; the dark hair and olive skin. He just stared at the boy standing in front of him.
"Dad?" "You okay?"
"I am now. C'mon, Buddy. Let's go surprise your mom with breakfast."
Adapted in part from Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton