So, I Guess I’m Still Disturbed About the Whole Dog Thing.

I am driving with my family in Texas. We stop in the parking lot of what looks like a furniture store. We are going to get an urn for Ivan’s ashes (he was cremated).

We go in to the store and go to a place in one dark corner mostly sectioned off by bookshelves. My brother and parents are with me. There is a lady at the desk who is helping my parents. I see an urn in the corner that I want to get. It has a picture of a frog on it and a poem. I can’t remember the words to the poem, but basically they are saying that since God made all creatures with such wonderful complexity, he must care for them all when they die, even things as small and seemingly insignificant as an insect.

I wake up crying.

I go back to sleep and drift off into an episode of sleep paralysis. I sort of dream while I am in the episode that I am petting Ivan, but he starts to turn to ash while I am petting him. I try to grab him but he slips away and my hands are full of ash and his hair. He had such gleamingly white, brilliant hair. When he was outside it caught the sun… It doesn’t seem right that he was burned; I don’t understand why my parents did that. I started to hear crackling noises… then I was back in bed trying to wake up, but I couldn’t move anything but my left foot. I couldn’t breathe. My breathing was too shallow. I was suffocating.

I panic, as I always do when this happens. I start to try to breathe more heavily, hoping that the lack of oxygen will force my body to wake up all the way or that the sound will wake up Sam. I start to move my left foot up and down, up and down, like I’m pumping the brake in my car. I try to move my legs but they are so heavy and I am powerless. I think the movement of my foot tickles Sam. He rolls over in bed. I wake up gasping for air.

~ by snowhite197 on March 6, 2008.