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More Dreams

Last night I dreamed I got out of the hospital after an extended stay. I had almost died, and I walked out of the hospital, hobbling on a cane. I looked at the bright sun, the sidewalks, the people, and I was so thankful to be alive.

The dream came from some things that have been happening in real life:

1. I was talking about "freaks" in my workshop class because a student had written about sideshow freaks in a story. I was talking about how many literary authors had written about freaks, including Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor. The outward strangeness stands for the inner strangeness we all feel at times. (In the dream I walked with a cane and it felt unusual to me; I felt different, a bit like an outsider).

2. My father-in-law, a terminal cancer patient, recently went into the hospital because of breathing problems.

3. I saw a show on PBS about how people in wheelchairs live. A doctor gave wheelchair bound people a camera. They filmed their challenges. One woman had to stay in a convalescent home for several days because her wheelchair needed repairs. Since she had no way of getting along without her chair, she had to turn herself in to this home. In the home, they would not help her to the bathroom but told her to defecate into her diaper. Once her chair was fixed, the convalescent home drove her home in their van. When the driver set her outside her home, the driver left. The chair stalled and the woman was stuck in the immobile chair for several hours. It started getting dark, and she was crying from the humiliation and boredom. I was very moved by this program.