Who Do You Talk To?

Today while wandering around my Facebook feed I came across a post from a friend who was asking if it is normal for him to want to speak with his deceased father.

That is an interesting, and very human question. I have never really felt that particular urge although I do on occasion give more than a little thought to my father who, the great raconteur Joseph has been gone now for thirteen years.

His impact on me has been great, but perhaps not on the level that he would have preferred. Most of the the lessons that I learned from him were less a result of his teaching and more a result of my critically observing.

He was human, as am I. His flaws were his, and mine are mine.

One night I was sitting in his home in Manchester, New Hampshire and he was deep in sleep on his couch as I watched the Red Sox on the television. At the time he was suffering from diabetic neuropathy. He would sometimes twitch suddenly and yelp whether he was awake or asleep as a result of sharp pains that would shoot from his feet and up his legs.

On this afternoon however, his sharp yelps were in absentia. He was deep in the arms of Morpheus and in full REM. In sleep, on this one day he was given relief from his earthly pains. This relief may have been the result of his own sub-concious, or of something else altogether. I will leave that to the beliefs or hopes of you who is reading this self-serving stream of consciousness that I call a blog.

He was yammering away in a guttural form of the New Brunswick version of the French-Canadien language. It was loud enough to hear, and just about clear enough to understand, at least most of it. Mixed with a few English words and terms it came quickly and without guile. Joseph was speaking to "Ma". In his life there was only one that he called that, and she had been gone at the time for just about 25 years.

He never really moved. His arms twitched a bit but he stayed in position on the couch for maybe ten minutes, speaking in French the whole time. The conversation was one-sided, but you could tell that there was someone on the other end. He asked questions and responded to questions.

All I did was sit there and listen, trying to understand exactly what it was, or who it was that he was speaking with in his dreams.

Then it stopped. No goodbye, no clean cut. The conversation ended and over the next ten to twelve minutes he slowly stirred form his slumber and sat up. I walked to the kitchen and poured him a glass of water.

He drank a little water and noticed me staring. 

"You were dreaming", I said.

"No I wasn't." he responded without a second of thought. "I was talking to your Memere." 

This led to a memorable conversation. Over the years I had heard that he spoke French in his sleep once in a while. His wife said these occurrences were quite frequent. In his daily life he was capable of a smattering of French, but I would never have considered him fluent. When I was in New Brunswick with him he could hold his own, and the longer he was there the better he became. He was never though, to my memory, a seamless speaker of the language.

In his dreams it would seem he was fluent.

He explained to me that he "spoke with his "Ma" frequently, and always about his current life and circumstances. They had long and detailed conversations and he was convinced that these talks were not dreams at all, but visits from his Mother.

The mind is a wonderful and mysterious creation.

Who do you speak with in your dreams?