The Disappearing Childhood

Two nights ago I dreamed that my parents' home had disappeared; in its place was a cemetery.

The image came from a book, of course: in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, the narrator recounts a key piece of his childhood, when he journeys with his father to Kansas in search of his grandfather's grave.

It was a question of geography. In the dream I was concerned, forcing my parents to drive back and forth along Chestnut Street. There were the railroad tracks, then the cemetery, then the highway. Lost was everything in between. The yellow house halfway down the street that marked the shortcut, the gravel driveway and the barbed wire fence we used to climb under to make it to the cherry tree. And everything beyond. The green grass, the hammock, the pines. Consumed by granite.

It's a constant fear of mine: that my home will disappear. The place where I spent formative years, the place I retreat to when the howling humanity of New York becomes too much. It's compounded by a fear of death so intense that there are nights when I'm physically crippled by it. I tell people: I fear death so much because I love life so much. It's a curse.

In my dream, the cemetery was slightly raised from the road, like the cemetery in nearby Warren County, where the oldest graves teetered on the edge of the highway, gravestones at 45 degree angles, and the threat of a coffin peeking out of the soil, constantly making driving that stretch of road a bit more thrilling.

Death peeking out at us. And that's about all I'd like to read into that.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.