There are some days in August for which I have no memory. They include when I first arrived at Cottonwood and several days after. Based on my discussions with staff after I returned to myself, I was very much in an incoherent state.
What I do remember are some extremely vivid stories that I told myself. Were these dreams? Hallucinations? I don’t know. I probably won’t ever know.
But let me tell you. They were wild.
And entertaining. It was like I was watching movies or tv shows, but I was in them. I was the star. I had to play the part.
I brought in ideas from other media that I’ve watched or read, I know that. In part, some of the stories actually relied on other media, and there being confusion about who wrote what in which timeline.
Several of the stories focused on the problem of writing a book, and some novel solutions to do so. Including a very strange one about creating an entire universe, falling in love with all the people in it, and then killing everyone who didn’t fit the narrative. But you write the killing in somehow. It made sense at the time.
I’m not sure how much of it I’ll actually be able to write out in a comprehensible way.
There was one that started from the idea of using a mnemonic device like the poem “The House that Jack Built” to memorize a complex series of ideas. Basically, using short rhymes as a key to remember the larger concepts. And each rhyme was linked with a particular friend.
A lot of my, we’ll call them dreams, involved Big Creek. The idea of Big Creek being a simulation that was only made real because I forced them to make it a real place. The idea of Big Creek as a kind of slice of heaven where people just get along and realize how to live life better.
Most of my dreams were hopelessly idealistic and optimistic. Even the dark parts were in service to a greater love.
Another theme was letting yourself be helped. And that magic is real, but sometimes you need to ask for help to make it happen.
And that’s true. Ambrose made magic for me by asking people to help make it happen.
I went camping the week after his death. It’s something that we planned, knowing that he would likely die before I did just because of our age gap. We had, in fact, rehearsed this camping trip together. We talked about what I’d want to do, and how I’d feel after his passing. And on one of the days, we went to the nearby small town of Featherville for breakfast. And on that day, we talked to a couple who had happened to be having breakfast there as well. The man told us some jokes, including one about a woman whose husband had just died.
Ambrose asked that man to show up at that Featherville breakfast joint again, on a very specific day. I forgot all about it, because my goal was always to believe that Ambrose would live “at least ten more years” even if that wasn’t actually the case. Because that mindset allowed us to LIVE.
And, somehow, he got the day exactly right.
And this man, found me at the cafe in Featherville. He spoke to me, knowing I didn’t remember him. And he told me the joke. About the woman whose husband was always so mean to her that when he died everyone was certain he would come back to haunt her. But she had the last laugh, because she buried him upside down and he’d never ask for directions.
I laughed at the joke. A joyful, full bodied laugh. And I took the man’s card and offered one of my own. And I didn’t remember that this had been the plan until much later.
It was magic.
Magic is what will get me through this. The magic that I make with my friends and family, and the magic that Ambrose has left behind for me to discover. The connections that will continue to reverberate as long as I remember that they are there.
It all comes back to stories. I was out of my head, but I was telling stories. Creating magic out of whatever it was I was going through, the stress of the moment, and the painful processing. Maybe the time wasn’t missing so much as overwhelmed by the stories.