It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad Love

I've spent the last few days having dreams that could be divided into chapters or episodes. My husband would tease me about my dreams because they are always so involved and vivid. He'd joke that his were similar to this:

'well, I got up and went to work. Then, I drove home'

That was his dream. Mine, on the other hand was like this:

' On a frosty Monday morning, I awoke. The temperature in the bedroom was 65 degrees. I was wearing my blue pajama pants and the socks with the kitties embroidered in the arch. Then, I went to the bathroom and urinated 24 ml of pee, the color of sunlight..'

Anyway I am grateful for this affliction I have of way too involved dreams or dream recall. I now 'see' my long long years with Gordon in a new way.

Our love for one another erased the 'me' in the 'us'. All that existed was an 'us' but, on some level, we each continued striving to return to the 'me'. I think that is true of life. Our need to return to a 'me'. Kind of survival instinct. Anyway, I remember when I met Gordon. I wasn't all that jazzed about me, but I sure felt him as a potent part of an us. Wow, I hope that other people feel the kind of passion I had for the 'us'. We loved one another so much we stopped even answering mail from ourselves.

Yeah, mental illness will do that, I suppose, on his side. Everyone kind of points to his history of depression as the culprit of his decision to STOP. I don't know. I see it as a little more complicated than that. I have tried paging through disconnected documents of genealogy to find answers to why his tribe wanted so desperately to become instinct. And answers won't be found in a census from 1930, or an address in the 20's. The answers require me to turn it over to my brain or to memory or whatever to find.

So, our love was a mad mad mad mad one. We loved one another and left nothing back for ourselves. My mom used to say', 'always have some money in your shoe'. I understand that fully. Keep some back for you. Never give it all away. Because, if you give it away, someone just might take it, run with it, or, even worse, die with it. And, then what? You gotta start all over, or, search for scraps from the past and start all over.

It was a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Love. Wow, it was so great when it was great. And, perhaps it took that potency for us to make way for two of the most incredible people, our kids. I don't expect greatness, like, cures for cancer, or for them to paint the perfect picture, but, maybe, just maybe, what I can do for them now is to do for myself now? To show them what my mom showed me, in a cryptic message about a dollar in a shoe? These people, these two kids, are not kids. They are two individuals that I will hope and pray will never, ever forget who they are so that they make way for an us.