The Funeral

The cremation of Andrew Makeson was earlier in the week. The funeral director and I were the only attendants.

I have many stories to tell, so I will not dwell upon the newly dead. I have one more story to tell about Makeson, and I know it must be told before he can be put to rest. He was never one for sentementaility; neither am I. He lives on in his word, and it is my duty to recall him one final time.

The Dreamer

My friend was a dreamer at heart, and most of his writing stemmed from either his own dreams, or his waking daydreams of what could be so. As respected an academic as he was, he interested me most in his recollections of his night-time wanderings, even as the academic community enjoyed his less abstract works. Of these I have read little, and what I have read has failed to impress me in the way his dreams always did. Perhaps he wrote them for money, or fame, or academic recognition. I only know that it his dreams I recall him for, and his dreams I share with the world.

Last night I dreamed of waking once again, rising from the tired night to the place I now know so fondly. It was cold, but the chill did not bother me. The sky shone defiance to the wind, brighter than the waking sun could ever gleam, in a sky of golden white. The moment reminded me of how the world shines when a storm first passes, as the light breaks through the thickest clouds and sets the clouds aglow, sending the last of the cold and rain scurrying for the shadows that once prevailed. I thought all this and knew it was so, as I fell to the grass below me in delight.

But the cold wind still blew through the world, even in that moment of passing rain. I did not move but I was standing, then, and looking in the direction of the chill. The clouds there had not seen that brightest sun and cast the world of my imaginings below them into shadow. And as I looked back and saw myself lying in delight, I knew it could not last while the shadow lingered on the horizon. Then I was gone and back to myself, turning to face the wind where I knew I must be.

Then I was gone from the peaceful meadow, and in a place I knew far better. It was not as it is in the world I wake to, which is to say I know that my mind created this place, but still I know it better than any place I can reach by waking. I know it well, but I do not go there often now, as the skies above it are dark and grey.

It was my place, once. A place with trees and an old tree stump, where I could sit and be alone with my thoughts. The sky was never dark, but shone with me, sang along to the chords of my heart. It was a place where I was myself, the one and only place where I was me. It was a place I came to love, a place where I carved myself into the wood, the earth, and the sky, and called it my heart.

I walked there last night, in the darkness, and knew it was no longer my own. The stump which had once served as my resting place now covered in names, dates, words. “Lucy and Andy”, carved in a heart. “J +A” carved on a root. June 1976, a month which had carved itself in the heart of my heart. Looking at the sum of my broken heart, I yearned for the days when the stump was just a place to sit, before I chose to carve words across its wooden surface. Looking to the sky, I saw perhaps a hint of that shining sky through the clouds, and I wish, how I wish, that my heart was still my own.

So I sit, once again, In the heart of my mind, in a place that I could once be alone in. But it was not empty, this time. With the names came faces, and with the dates came times, and all through my forest there walked the shadows  of my life, each face carrying with them a piece of my heart, given away and never returned. But I do not dwell on these faces, and as I sit, I find I am alone once more with myself.

The stump is marked with names, but they did not worry me anymore. My heart has been hurt and healed, but still it heals. The sky is still dark, but that is not a problem. Sitting alone once again, I felt the hours pass by. The cold wind that had blown incessantly was finally still, and I smiled again. I remembered once again the first truth I had carved here, in the depths of my heart.

“We sit alone on the shores of our mind,
Lonely Islands of souls and dreams
waiting for the ship to take us to another shore”

And though my lonely forest is far from the ocean, and I have never found a foreign shore that I could call home, I can wait for the day that I can walk the pathways of my lonely forest with another.

 Andrew was a talented writer, but his dreams are what interested me most about him. The clearing in the forest was a common element of his dreams throughout his life, a place he called his own but yearned to call another’s. This dream was one of the first he ever recounted to me, and it has continued to fascinate me in the detail it carries ever since. An almost conscious dreamer, Andrews mind dwelled on his life, and his brief forays into idyllic dreadfulness always give way to his struggle with loneliness, his troubled experiences with love, and his attempts to accept the changing world he lived in. As he said to me, long ago, “We are lost, almost all our lives. The moments when we find ourselves, those are the moments when we truly live.”

There is much more to be said on Andrew Makeson’s life, and I will continue to let him say it. He is beyond the world now, but his words live on in my collection. Words are all that remain of him, and it is these words I must live for.