My Mama Walked With The Unborn Me

Chapter 5:- The Dreams That Remained

Was it the third day? Or is she just walking on a treadmill? Of course, it was apparent that the average standard of “One and Three-Quarter Days” has no gravity in Anna’s case. But, the question was, even with the third day proudly looming over her, there was still no inkling of a seashore on the eastern horizon.

Even though Anna knew the journey would be longer than this, it didn’t save her heart from craving that faintest line of moisture lining the distant horizon. To tell her, Just a Little More!

However, the journey had, in the least, become much easier.

Faith … is something very Powerful. Even when your body withers, if your faith stands strong, you can still tread a thousand more deserts.

And Anna had more than enough reasons to hold onto Faith. To have Hope.

Eddie’s sacrifice,

Her dying home,…

…Annie…

She still remembers how faint and low it sounded when Eddie called her name. The sorrow in his voice just as clear as the joy of calling it for the first time.

At least he had the joy of calling the name of his child before dying.

What a father wouldn’t go through to make sure his child is safe and sound? And for Annie, Eddie died. He made sure the flood never reached his family, even if it drowned himself.

Annie…

If it wasn’t for Annie, Anna would have died of grief in Laurelwen. If it wasn’t for Annie, she would have been lying deceased under the dune.

It was all for her, it was all because of her.

Every breath that she takes now, claims over and over that GOD is not done with her yet. That there is a safe haven promised to her beyond this horizon, beyond this desert.

And with that Faith, her arms ceased aching from the burden, her back no more bent with weight, shoulders no longer haunched from fatigue. Her legs found the constant rhythm of walk that demanded lesser rest. Her heart that saw misery around her now has found oneness with it.

But there was something that remained.

The Dreams. The Memory. The Nightmares.

Whatever name may it bear, it still comes as a faithful visitor in her sleeping hours. Every time her eyes will be hooded with slumber, they would come. And it was this dream that still left a part hollow in her chest.

The dream was of Eddie.

He lay on the sand as he did while dying, his limbs lifeless. Everything else around was the same, the dead brothers scattered at some distance and in every direction. The buildings crumpled from damage, silent from abandonment.

The only exception, there was no blood on him. Which felt like a lie that hurt more for the truth is known. Her eyes travelled from his chest which was supposed to be battered to the face which was supposed to be marred.

It was the only image that would remain with her after waking. Everything else would fade but this. Even in her wakefulness, she would remember it.

She remembered his eyes, Open.

It didn’t scare her. They were his gentle, moist orbs staring back. Which too, were dead. Anna stared back with numb eyes, wondering with a longing.

‘Even in death, They were beautiful.’

The first night when she dreamt of it, still in Laurelwen, she woke up gasping for air and tears blurring her vision.

“Even in death, They were beautiful.”

She has always felt it. As years passed and they grew older, together. He grew more beautiful than she remembered. Looking at him would always bring calmness to her heart, just like when she first saw him.

In those days, she didn’t understand that Love puts the heart at rest, not making it thrum wildly behind her ribs and hands sweating like crazy as teenagers often felt, that is normal infatuation. She only inferred it when she realized that it was the face of Eddie she could look at without ceasing, without tiring, without being afraid.

She pondered then, how foolish was it of her to have believed that love was like a sudden bloom of a flower, wafting of all sorts of ethereal fragrances that would last forever. She believed she would be able to discern it when she would fall in love.

But what she found about love was that Love, in truth, is like Honey.

It takes a long time from nectar from countless flowers and sucked by countless bees to finally be filled in the honeycomb. And after this long time that the honey comes in the form which would never fester.

It took her eleven years to realize that she loved Eddie. It took eleven years of knowing each other, of friendship, of trust to form the honey of Love between Anna and Eddie.

How was she ever able to not find Beauty and Love in him one way or the other?

In the dream, in Laurelwen, she would remember. With all those wounds on him, with all that pain in him that she could not imagine. With all the blood dribbling from his broken chest, he still looked beautiful.

There are many other words to describe a man: handsome, good looking, dashing, charming, stunning, striking.

But no other word justified Eddie as did the word Beautiful. Inside and out, with or without. He was Beautiful. And he remained beautiful even after death.

The dream would always end with her being dragged away from him by some power not known to her. She would beg to not let go, but her pleadings would never be birthed into spoken words, dying in her throat. At first, they made her restless, waking her with a tight knot in her heart and an uncomfortable rigidity in her bones.

The more often they came the more she got habituated of it. She now wakes with the knowingness of its presence, her eyelids would slowly unravel, taking time to taste the reality. And she would sigh, knowing what remains.

The Dreams. The Memory. The Nightmares…

And the Journey.