What Brought Me Here:
A Visit from my Grim Reaper
That morning, my wife came into the room to check on me.
“What happened in here?”
We were sleeping separately. Popcorn kernels lay scattered over the carpet, the field of a recent skirmish. She began to collect the kernels into the bowl.
“I had a dream.”
As if portrayed in a graphic‑novel panel, it came for me from my left. I estimate the time was 3 a.m., about two weeks after August 20th, 2019. It did not wish to parley — this dark‑cloaked figure with dark‑masked, ruby backlit eyes. I saw only the eyes; I do not recall whether it brandished a weapon.
It moved rapidly, with the intent of an assassin. Just as quickly, I lunged my torso upright and twisted leftward to meet the figure. My arms rose to the occasion, and my hands reached where the neck would arrive. Then, as quickly as the lunge, I woke up.
What other choice might I have had in all this?
State of mind. I thought about this dream for a minute, not more than two. No night sweats, no terror, not a grimace. It came as no surprise, really. Really, it came as no surprise.
I do not remember exactly, but I thought the best action was to go back to sleep. I got that over with, and I won. I choked the grim reaper. I fought the reaper, and the reaper did not win.
I checked status: I did not have to pee. I stared at the wall in front of me for a moment. Was I hungry? Did I want another snack? Was it — could it have been — that I did not care? What did I have to lose?
Golly, that was the grim reaper. Others thought it was the devil, Satan, Satan for real — Beelzebub. Now that would have been frightening. Thankfully, I do not believe in the devil in any ontological fashion.
When I was young, my maternal grandfather said, “Hey, bub,” when he greeted me. When I was a kid in church, I thought people of the cloth were saying “Beelzebug,” even “Beetlebug.” My fifth‑grade science teacher told me about Beatlejuice, a star — spelled, she corrected, Betelgeuse.
Think of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. There is that line about Beelzebub reserving a devil just for him. Could be in that case the devil seemed very real. Yes, it did seem very real to me, that Grim Reaper. My own one. Now that I think about it.
From an early age, my word‑diet of devilish things was lightly seasoned. I had a notion that stories referring to the devil, however nominated, were meant to make a point. The point had to do with how I should act, and how a life force for good in the world could abide. This was the spirit in which ministers in my youth invoked the name of Satan.
Later, I learned that there are those who believe otherwise. One could say that I believed as expected at story time: as a trusting little child. Have I put away childish things? I do not ask this entirely rhetorically, and my answer in this case is affirmatively, “No.”
Therefore, if to deny understanding that Satan — the most Miltonian of words for evil — exists outside the narratives in which we find him is in some sense childishly devilish, then I persist in this admittedly puerile attitude and clever tone.
The stories contain a power of their own, and we need not burden them beyond their innate life force. That is my thought, my simple ironic notion.
The dream contained a motive power of its own, and I am dream‑speaking of the grim reaper — my demise. Sit up and resist; lunge and fight, with all three hundred pounds of me at the dream time. I would beat death, or (ha‑ha) die trying.
Am I satisfied with this gymnastic thinking? I think so. My kinetic response to the dream — that I have sealed in my memory. And the popcorn — like so much dead skin flaking off my body — my wife saw all of that.
My response to the dream was not emblematic of the heroic, not indicative of any hero painted on a Grecian urn. To my thinking, it expresses a tactic operative at the edge of consciousness. Now I am freighting a dream with more than it might bear. I am the bearer of that dream. I am bearing witness.
Another might say in observance, “He grew satisfied with his capacity for resiliency. He bore it out; he aligned his efforts with the dream.”
Is my interpretation tactical? I think so. Enter now the strategists in this narrative. The strategists gave me a way forward. They presented options in the early days of September 2019, and we decided on the first steps.
Because I have referred to topics of a religious bent, I might as well introduce those of a sporting nature: I wanted the oncologists to throw the Hail Mary pass right away. Instead, they advised a patient ground game to start.
To mash it up further, one of the oncologists said that we had reached the fifth inning, that it was time to bring in the middle reliever, and that we would hold Rivera for the ninth‑inning close. He was also the oncologist who gave me the direct answer to my statistical chances of survival.
“You and Rebecca are facing a major decision.”
However, the starting pitcher — who was the starter?
And now it is time to close this introduction of the account of how a friend once said that it is like I must become “Two Years A Vampire.”