I first knew something was up when he came to me in my dreams.

It was late spring when he showed up in a beautiful vignette, low lit in ambers and cherry reds and browns, in slightly slow motion with the sound muted. We were sitting across from each other in a social setting of sorts. It was not clear to me if we were in someone’s home or in an upscale lounge, but it was Ralph Lauren all the way, as my one-time confidant sat in a velvet wingback chair in a jacket, but with no tie. I was similarly dressed for an evening out as were those around us. We laughed and chatted as you would at a social encounter and we engaged with the people around us, similarly involved. At a point then, I got up. It was not clear to me if I was leaving or if I was only excusing myself momentarily to say hello to someone. But I did get up and move away and as I passed the right side of his chair, I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, bordering his hairline.

Instantly I was filled with a sublime overwhelming jolt that rattled me from the most fundamental to the most sophisticated of my senses. I woke up abruptly to the pitch black of the soft night air and found myself sitting straight up in bed, thoroughly startled but not cold. The details of the dream played back in my mind with crystal clarity. I blinked in the darkness about me, trying to grasp what had just happened but I could not understand. I had never experienced this feeling, which I can only describe as peaceful electrocution. I had not seen or talked to this man for over a year. How could this man and this experience, the jolt be related? But there was no mistaking the sensual and cosmic moment of the dream.

We had known each other through confidences shared, this warrior of the heart’s truest wants and needs. He was a rock star and a warrior and as much as one who was thoroughly experienced with sex, drugs and rock and roll could be, a priest. He was a port in the storm when I was dangerously adrift. But we hadn’t seen each other for a long time and it was a surprise to run into him in my dream.

I lay back down and instantly went to sleep, unusual for me. I wanted so much to get this dream back but it wouldn’t come. I woke up puzzled, disturbed, agitated. That extraordinary physical experience of peace had long passed and I was at a complete loss to understand. All I could get back was the memory of the electric moment of the kiss. I searched my heart and my senses and couldn’t find myself responding to this man in a sexual or romantic manner. By the time I went to work, I was positive this dream wasn’t about him. As I stood in line at Starbucks, I remembered the kiss and I wondered if it was about foreheads. I watched a very sexy guy make my coffee and studied his forehead with great scrutiny, thanks to my ever- present Oakleys. I got nothing. Was feeling no love from this guy’s forehead. Then later after I signed for UPS, I watched that guy’s broad, tanned forehead and his great blond hairline and drew another blank. Where the hell had I been last night?

Now emboldened by utter failure, I watched all the foreheads that came my way, in complete abandon and rebellion. Of course, my hapless victims could never be certain I was starring mercilessly at them because of the Oakleys. It’s all about the Oakleys. But I was and I did. Stare. For a whole week. Nothing. Absolutely nothing surfaced. Then I started having the dream again. Only this time it was someone else in the chair. And although there was the same kiss, it did not have the same effect. And then there were women in the chair. All told, I had the dream about six more times. Everything exactly the same, except for the person who was sitting across from me and for the absent thrill of the sublime peace that came with the kiss.

It was at the end of the summer that I heard that the rock and roll warrior whom I dreamed about had been seriously ill with a dire infection and had been in the hospital. Apparently, he went hallucinatory in the throes of bacterial devastation. I was quite concerned to hear of his trauma only until I heard when it all came down.

Exactly when I had my dream.

He was fighting for his life in a hospital bed but appeared to me in my sleep well dressed, happy, relaxed. He was telling me something and whatever it was, I received an exquisite gift of The Kiss of Peace. So the dream was about him and it was about something very real. It’s interesting to me that I literally retreated to my sunglasses in an effort to obscure the light, to keep from seeing what really happened. I even dreamed the same dream over and over to tell myself that it was about him and that there was something real going on. But I wasn’t buying it and I wouldn’t take my own clues.

The rock and roll warrior made a full recovery and now is in good health. I still wonder whether he was leaving this life and if or why he changed his course. And until just today I did not know what he was really saying to me. As well, only now do I re-remember, over and over, that the sound was muted. Only now do I finally understand the dream of The Kiss of Peace.

Got word that The High Priest and Warrior of Rock and Roll will retire and leave town this fall. Of course, now I know exactly where I am. Another good bye. A very real good bye. Again. But it's not the goodbye the peril of his tryst in the hospital would indicate. It's a much deeper and broader goodbye and he's completely ready. This is his time. And he has great and abiding peace.

As for me, when it's time to say goodbye to this one, I will leave the Oakleys in my handbag, only wanting to know just this: will the last person to leave my heart Please turn out the lights and leave the key?


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA