Unsatisfying Answers

Dearest Rachel –

Let me start off, honey, with an expression of appreciation, regardless. It’s always wonderful to see you again, even if it’s only in a dream – particularly since these dreams are so much rarer than I’d like them to be. Your kisses, deep and insistent as they were – gaw, how I’ve missed them! – were just as I remember them (but you know how much I worry about the accuracy of my memory). I treasure each visit you make, even as I’m likely to recognize your spirit as the simulacrum that you are, even within the moment.

But as a general rule, you have always been honest with me about this very fact. I know that I have, upon waking, reproached myself for asking, knowing full well that you would answer without a trace of guile, thereby dispelling the lovely illusion I had just been in. Not this time. For once, your response to my now-stock question of “is it really you?” (why can’t I stop myself from asking that?) was something more along the lines of “of course it is; who else would it be?”

Now, perhaps I’m overthinking this; certainly, if the focus of your response was on your own rejoining question, it would be more than fair. After all, who else would I have dreamed up? Megumi? I don’t even know who she is yet – or if she is, for that matter. One of the girls? That would be beyond presumptuous, even if I wanted a relationship like ours with one of them. No, it was definitely you before me, and your reply made light of that fact. But it also effectively embraced the supposition that it was ‘really’ you, implicit in my own obligatory question – and that’s where the problem lay. Because, as you’ve no doubt read throughout so many of these letters, I have so many questions for the real you, and if that was who was standing before me, I was going begin to ask them.

Although, before I could get on with those questions, there were others that surfaced that had to be gotten out of the way, if you were real and alive. First of all, I had to know where you had been all this time, if not with Daniel and me. Coupled with that was the question of why you had disappeared until now. And finally, there was the mystery of what brought you back to me now, assuming you were really back.

As I’m sitting here, trying to collect my thoughts about it all, I can’t remember what it was you said in response to any of these. All I know is that I was left unsatisfied by any of them; they didn’t make sense to me. Which, if I took into account the fact that this was a dream I was in, would have been understandable – dreams, of course, don’t have to make sense, and a good thing, too, as they rarely manage to, anyway. But when you’re in the middle of one, it isn’t always obvious that you are, and so I was stuck in this position of feeling like I was in my reality, but with you by my side, for whatever reason – and I couldn’t figure out how it came to be, and your answers toward that end didn’t add up.

Even as I showed you what had become of my life and our home since you left so long ago brought reactions from you that felt somehow… off. You seemed reasonably impressed with the house, if slightly dismayed at how much was no longer there from your time – although there was an air of resignation about you, a sense that you couldn’t blame me for having gotten rid of so much of what was yours, simply because you understood that I had concluded that you wouldn’t be coming back for any of it. It didn’t seem quite out of line with what I might expect of you, but it was a much more muted reaction than I might have anticipated.

Likewise, I found myself at a bit of a loss to show you my new ring with ‘your’ stone in it. Your presence before me rather rendered the whole idea of memorializing you so moot; if this was you before me, what was in that urn? What, exactly, had this diamond been grown from, if you were real and alive? I wasn’t ready to ask that question, specifically, but I was aware of the self-contradictory nature within the moment. I mean, if I’d sent the company a lock of your hair to work with (which they do; I could literally have a similar diamond make from my own while I’m still alive), that would have been one thing. But this had been made from ashes – your ashes, supposedly. But with you in front of me, the whole premise was called into question. And I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to the conundrum at that moment.

You can probably tell that the threads of this dream were already beginning to fray, and I didn’t even get the chance to ask you some of the bigger questions about heaven and the afterlife that I would have had for you. To be honest, I wouldn’t know if you could have answered them anyway, seeing as your initial response to be rather suggested that you were alive, so would you have known those answers in any case? And so I found myself staring at our bedroom ceiling at about three-thirty this morning, trying to parse all that had passed between us in those moments of now-realized-to-be unconsciousness.

It was good to see you, honey. I have missed your touch, your kiss; those reminders were truly pleasant. But, as much as I hate myself for wreaking the illusion by asking if you’re real, only for you to respond with your characteristic honesty (and perhaps, a touch of regret), I think I prefer that to any deceptive attempt to keep the illusion going.

I should probably just get on with my day, now. Take care of yourself honey; keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.