This is damned embarrassing, the old man thought, as a nurse helped position him on the toilet. Can't even do this anymore. He felt himself going to the washroom and could faintly hear the sound of water meeting water. The act finished, the nurse helped him up and pulled his trousers up. She helped him back into his wheelchair and moved him out of the bathroom and across the ward, over near the window.
There he sat. Each day the same. He sat and watched the stubble-filled field and waited. He waited to be fed. He waited to be taken to the washroom. He waited to be put to bed. Always, he waited. And always the scene was the same. Or so it appeared in his mind. Always, it was fall outside his window, and the leaves were off the trees and stubble filled the field, just waiting to be ploughed under.
And always he was alone. Living in a solitary world where no others could intrude. It seemed long ago that strokes had ripped the powers of communication and movement from him. Except to crawl with a humbling feebleness from the chair that imprisoned him to the toilet or the bed. He lived contained in this broken shell that had once been his pride and joy. And others could no longer be a part of his world. He was forced to look inward, in the direction of his soul, to find the peace that came from companionship. It had been a difficult adjustment, because he had always been a social creature who had enjoyed the company of others, but his inward reflectiveness was now all-absorbing. He was alone.
He had been frustrated by this aloneness in the beginning. When he had awoken after the last stroke and discovered he had become a society of one, he had been frightened, and the fear had turned to bitter frustration. Frustration at not being able to be a part of life; at being forced to become a passive observer and not an active participant in the game of life. Eventually he had accepted the finality of the situation. There was no point in being frustrated. Indeed, there was little point in feeling any emotion, because it was impossible to express that emotion to any other member of humankind. So he had grown the stubble-filled, fall scene in his mind, and he watched and waited for the coming of winter. He waited for the falling of the first few flakes of snow.
One day, as he sat watching and waiting, the scene changed. It wasn't the arrival of winter that caused it to change. A figure entered it, standing on the other side of the field near the apple tree along the fence row. He strained with inward-looking consciousness to make out the figure, to bring it more clearly into focus, so he could ascertain who this figure was and why it had arrived so unceremoniously in the middle of the image that had been his alone for so long.
Then, as the time passed, he noticed that the figure seemed to be moving closer, drifting across the stubble-filled field and drawing nearer each time he imagined the scene in his struggle to escape the humility of reality. Finally, he was able to make out the figure, and he discovered that it was him standing there watching him watch the imagined scene. He was standing there in the prime of life, with an expression of concern on his face, watching the frail, old shell sit numbly by.
As the time continued to pass, and he continued to grow closer to his self, he found himself wondering if he would be able to communicate with it. Then, as he found himself focussing on the figure again, his question was answered when a thought broke across his consciousness.
"How are you, old friend?" the thought asked, as it slipped smoothly across his mind, seeming not to cause a single ripple on his inner self.
As he shifted his focus from the entry of the thought into his consciousness to the scene, he noticed that the image of his self now stood on this side of the field and was gazing reflectively in his direction. He admired the strong, young man who stood before him...his self on the other side of life, before what had come after.
"You look tired," came another thought. "How have they treated you?"
"I feel tired," he thought. "That's really the way I feel. I'm not sad. I'm not happy. I'm not angry or upset. I'm just tired. Very tired." He paused, interrupting his train of thought briefly. "Can I come home?" he thought ever so quietly. "Have you come to take me home?" the thought repeated.
"Yes," returned a reassuring thought. "I have come for you. I will take you home. But, first, remember," a thought invited him. "Remember," it said softly.
The scene came back into focus, and he found he was directly meeting the gaze of his younger self. As they continued to stare into each other, he felt the rest of the field start to revolve around the figure, slowly at first and then gradually faster and faster, until it was a mind-disorienting blur. Then it froze, and the scene had changed. Instead of the stubble-filled field, he was gazing down the street where he had grown up. Although he doubted how it could happen, he felt he was a boy again, out playing some boyish game in the old neighbourhood.
"Frank," a voice broke into his thoughts. "Frank!" it repeated. "It's your turn. Will you hurry up and shoot before Mom calls us for supper?"
He looked and saw his brother, Robert, standing beside him. They were playing marbles. He looked and saw he was holding a marble in his hand.
"Take your turn, Frank," Robert implored. "What's the matter with you?"
"Frank! Robert!" a woman's voice called from down the street. "Come on, boys, it's suppertime!"
"There, I told you," said Robert. "If you'd only have hurried," he said, before turning and running toward the sound of the woman's voice.
He found that he followed his brother. He could feel himself running, drawing ever closer to home. He ran faster. And faster. Until he felt his feet would surely fail him.
Then he saw her. His mother. Standing on the front step in her apron, calling her flock for the evening meal. His mind was crowded with images of this kind and gentle woman as she tended his wounds, both physical and emotional, and quietly prepared him for the rigours of life.
He ran even faster. He strained to reach her. He wanted to smother himself in her apron and again hear her soothing voice, calming him, telling him everything was all right.
"I'm coming, mother!" he cried. "I'm coming! I'm coming!"
He felt himself drawing closer and closer. He could see her more clearly. He stretched out his arms and reached for the warm, secure strength she offered. Then, just when he could feel her presence, and he could smell the comfortableness of her, the vision vanished, and he was again sitting, staring into the autumn scene. And his other self stared back. A tear trickled gently down his cheek.
"Why do you cry?" a thought asked.
"I love her," he thought in return. "I thought I was going to be with her again. I thought she could hold me and make me well again."
"Like she did when you fell off your bicycle and skinned your knee?"
"Yes. And like she did when I had the measles and had to stay home from school," he thought.
"She was a kind and good lady, wasn't she?" came a thought.
"Yes. And I loved her."
He sat the rest of the day alone, continuing to watch the fall scene and his other self, but he felt strangely at peace. His mind felt blissfully calm, without even a ripple. She stayed with him, and he even felt her presence after the nurse rolled him into bed for the night and he had all but forgotten the image of the fall scene.
Morning came, and soon he found himself sitting and watching and waiting. Again, the younger version of himself watched back from the edge of the stubble-filled field. They watched each other quietly for the longest time. Frank felt a kind of fear of thinking, after the experience of the previous day. Although the vision that had occupied his mind had left him with a feeling of warmth and peacefulness, the realness of it had forced a type of anxiety to invade his mind and cause him some uneasiness.
After a while, the other sensed the apprehension in him. "You are afraid?" asked a thought.
"Yes."
"There is no reason. We will only go where you have already been. What can be so frightening about that?" The thoughts gently cascaded over his mind, as if trying to calm him, to restore the feeling of peace.
"I am afraid because of the emotion they cause in me," he thought in return. "I am afraid that once they come, they will be ripped from me, like the one yesterday, and I cannot bear that." The thoughts flowed from him, seeming to ease the uneasiness that had intruded, as if it had been bottled in his mind.
"You need not fear," his self thought. "What you have had, you will always have; and where you have been, you will continue to be," came a thought that felt soothingly warm and caressing at the corners of his mind.
"But how do I know where we will go?" he asked in silence.
"You will go where you want to go," a thought replied.
"And where will that be?"
"Is it important?"
Pause.
"I'm ready," he finally thought.
He settled in and looked upon the fall scene and the figure who stood within. It gazed back at him reflectively, but he could not see into it. He knew that it could see into him, and he could feel it probing and examining him, but he did not know what for.
Then, after a time, the scene again started to revolve, slowly at first, like it had before. He braced his mind as the revolutions quickened and he started to feel the disorienting, disquieting sensation of dizziness taking hold of him. Suddenly his mind cleared, and he found himself standing in the waiting room of a hospital, the hospital where his daughter had been born.
"Mr. Claxton," someone said, causing him to start and the scene to snap into focus.
He looked and found himself confronted by a nurse. "Yes," he mumbled.
"Mr. Claxton," the nurse repeated. "Your wife has had a baby girl. Both she and the baby are doing fine. Come this way, and you can see your wife."
He followed the nurse, as she padded her way down the corridor in those foam-bottomed uniform shoes nurses wear. She arrived at the door to a room where she stopped.
"Your wife's in here," she said, opening the door for him.
He walked into the room and looked to where she lay in the bed, and he thought how radiant she looked in the afterglow of childbirth, but, oh, so very tired as well.
He walked across the room to the bed and bent over and kissed her. She smiled up at him, but, strangely, neither of them spoke. Instead, he stood beside the bed, holding her hand with one hand and caressing it with the other. He glanced down at her and caught her eye, and in that brief moment, in that grey monotone hospital room with the smell of antiseptic heavy in the air, they caught sight of each other's souls. This must be love, he thought. Today, I am truly in love.
At that moment a nurse broke through the door and shattered the mystical connection that had grown between them. His wife looked away with what seemed a touch of embarrassment, he thought, as he turned toward the nurse for a first glimpse of the creation of their love. Then it was over. He was back, and again a tear trickled down a well-worn face.
She came to visit him that afternoon; his daughter, that is. She hadn't been to see him for some time, but for some reason she appeared that afternoon. He appreciated the gesture whenever she came, but it was all rather meaningless since he had lost the power of communication. They sat silently, as if trying to read each other's thoughts, but on this day, like all the others, it was to no avail.
They had been close once, when it had been possible to be close, to love and to hate, and to suffer all the other emotions of humanity. But he no longer felt capable of life and had been convinced that he was in some type of state of living death, until the experiences of the last couple of days. Now, as he sat staring with an apparent emotional blankness, he thought he felt. He thought he felt something stirring in him. And even though she could never know, he thought he might again feel close to her.
She bent over and kissed him gently on the cheek as she rose to go.
"I love you, Daddy," she said softly in his ear, even though there was no way she could be sure he could hear or even understand.
There were times when she had spoken those words over the last while, when he had not been sure he had understood. But this time he did. After she had passed out of his line of vision, he felt a sadness, a feeling he thought had been lost forever.
That night as he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed he was sitting alone in a park. He was crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Even though it was a dream, he felt its realness. He felt a great sadness swell over him, even as he slept.
In the morning as he waited for the nurse to come and get him ready for another day, he seemed to feel a sense of urgency. He anxiously waited for her to take him to the washroom, feed him, wash and dress him, and then wheel him in front of the window, where the fall scene awaited.
It was as he had known it would be. His self gazed back. They watched one another but respected the privacy of each other's thoughts. He wondered what awaited him today. What would it be? Where would he go? Or what would he be forced to seek out in the distant recesses of his mind, where he had seldom gone recently?
This time, however, as he watched and waited, he was not fearful. He felt a calmness in his mind, and the sadness of the previous night had evaporated with the morning dew, although he could recall the realness of it even now.
"You slept well?" a thought finally asked.
"I had a dream," he thought in return.
"Was it a pleasant dream?" asked a second thought.
"Yes," he answered. "I found it so."
"What did you dream about?" asked a thought.
"I dreamed I was crying," he answered.
"And that pleased you?" came a thought.
"Yes," he thought in return.
"Why?"
"Because it made me feel alive again," he answered. "Even to dream of crying makes me feel alive after this."
"You do not seem to be afraid to see me today," came a thought.
"No," he answered. "I'm prepared for whatever may come. I'm ready."
He sat and watched the figure in the field. And the figure watched back. That was all that seemed to happen for some time, and their thoughts stayed silent. Considering that he had been impatient to revisit the scene, he felt no anxiousness as he waited. Then, as he had known it would, the scene started to move in his consciousness and to revolve on an imaginary axis. Gradually it moved faster and faster until it again started to cause a dizziness of his mind.
Just when he thought it would cause him to break the contact and return to his wheelchair beside the window, it started to slow and another scene started to come into focus, to make itself felt on his consciousness. It wasn't like the two previous experiences, because it didn't snap sharply into focus but rather appeared slightly fuzzy around the edges and difficult to become involved in.
Gradually, though, he realized that he was standing beside a young woman, his daughter, and she was attired in her wedding dress. She was reaching over and trying to adjust his cummerbund. He felt her delicate hands fussing with it, trying to fasten it behind.
"Really, Daddy, you're such a bother," she said. Then she looked up and into his eyes. "But I love you all the same," were the words that came from her lips, and at the same time her eyes came alight, the way they always did when she was overflowing with happiness and joy. He found himself thinking back to her visit and how he had almost forgotten the special bond that had existed between them.
A door opened somewhere out of his range of vision, and a voice intruded into the scene.
"It's time, you two," said the voice.
"Come on, Daddy," she said, smiling warmly at him and taking him by the hand. He found it beyond his capacity to speak to her. He silently followed after her, feeling as if he was drifting dreamily along, without his feet making contact with the floor. As a matter of fact, he was suddenly aware that the scene had remained unclear in his consciousness, as though he were encased in a translucent bubble that was drifting in a fog.
Still, he felt his daughter take his arm, and he took her hand. He felt emotion well up in him, as he walked with her to her wedding. He felt a profound sense of loss within him, as he now fought to continue moving forward. Whereas before he had drifted effortlessly forward, something now seemed to be holding him back, not letting him move forward with her. He felt her starting to move away from him. He felt he was starting to fall backward and away from her. He felt her hand slide through his, felt her fingertips lose contact with his. Just as she was about to disappear into the fog and out of his view, she looked back.
"I love you, Daddy," she said, smiling and waving gently back.
He felt as if he was lying prone on the ground and tried to reach out for her. But it made no difference. The harder he tried to reach out to her and the more he struggled to move after her, the more securely he seemed to be held.
"Goodbye, my little princess," he thought, as he watched her outline disappear from view. Then it was over and he was back. Again he felt the tears on his cheek.
He sat in the chair and watched the stubble-filled field as a few weather-dried leaves blew across, and the solitary figure within stood quietly and watched back. As he sat, he reflected inwardly on the scene that had just filled his mind. He saw the image of his daughter in her wedding dress and remembered the special look of happiness and joy she had given him as they had waited alone for the beginning of the ceremony.
Again he thought back to her recent visit, and he mourned what had been and that it could be no more. That they could no longer share those special times like they once had. They had been close once, he thought.
That night, as he slept, he found himself dreaming again. This time he was sitting in his office at work, but it was curiously quiet. The office was empty. He was alone. There was silence. In the dream, he sat at his desk. He felt the silence overwhelming and stifling. He found himself straining to see if he could hear anything, but there was nothing, except complete and thorough silence for as far as he could hear.
Then he felt the sadness starting to come over him. He felt it first in the pit of his stomach, and it gradually started to make its way up to his mind. He cried, and, again, there was a realness to the dream.
When he awoke, he felt anxious to be placed in front of the window, where he could imagine the fall scene. He felt impatience during the morning ritual, which seemed to proceed even slower than usual. He regarded the nurse with a feeling of disdain as she spooned the textureless mush into him during breakfast. I haven't time for this, he thought. I must find out what awaits.
Finally, he found himself back in front of the window. He found the calmness coming again to take his mind, and he felt his consciousness wander to where it was always fall, where the crops had been harvested, and where a solitary figure stood in a stubble-filled field and waited for him.
"Welcome," a thought said. "Have you slept well?"
"Yes, but I've dreamed again," he thought.
"Does that bother you?" came a thought.
"I'm not sure it bothers me, but I find it strange because I've not dreamed in such a long time; not since the last stroke," he answered.
There was a brief pause.
"Actually, I find it nice to be able to dream again," he finally thought. "I just wish I wouldn't be so alone, even in my dreams. That's what I think bothers me."
"You feel alone?" a thought asked.
"Yes," he answered. "I feel very alone, and I think that's what bothers me. Until you came, I thought I was completely alone, and I could not bear it. I had stopped being and only was. Now, I feel like I'm starting to be again, even if it is only in my mind," he thought.
There was another pause.
"Good," came a thought. "Good."
They sat and watched one another but were quiet for a while.
Then a thought again intruded into his mind.
"Are you ready?" it asked.
"Yes," he answered. "I would like to go."
He waited. Gradually the scene started to make those slow, circular motions he had come to expect. It turned, always gaining speed, and again starting to make him feel the slightest bit of dizziness. Then, as his mind started to feel an uncomfortableness caused by the spinning motion, it started to slow, and he found himself adjusting to a new mental picture as he arrived where he was going.
He found himself in his bed, in his bedroom in the house where he had raised his family. He was lying beside his wife, and he could feel her breathing gently, as she had when she slept beside him through nearly fifty years of marriage. He could not see her clearly as he looked over, but he reached out and took her hand and held it firmly in his.
He felt a type of inner strength and serenity to his mind as he held her hand, almost as if he could feel her strength flowing into him and somehow adding to the wholeness of his person. But wasn't that really how it had been, he thought? She had always been there by his side, encouraging and always urging him to strive to do his best. She had made him become what he had been. And he had been a good person and an upstanding member of his community.
Then, as he lay holding her hand, he sensed a difference. He listened for her breathing, but it had stopped. He found his hand suddenly holding the nothingness of the vision, and when he reached for her, he found there was nothing to take hold of. She was gone. And he was alone. There was nothing but the sadness for him to be with.
The scene returned and with it, the figure. He sat and it stood, and they regarded one another but were quiet. He felt extremely at ease as he wandered through the thoughtscapes of his mind, recalling this and remembering that. While he had been remorseful at the conclusion of the last thought trip, he now felt a certain peacefulness and pleasure as images from throughout his life crowded his mind, overflowing into one another and spilling over into his reality and the vision of the field.
"You are back," a thought commented.
"Yes," he thought, as he sent the thoughts and images of his past scurrying hither and yon into the corners of his mind, from whence they'd come.
"You seem changed," came another thought. "You seem different."
"Yes," he answered. "I am alive," he added matter of factly.
"How do you know?" came a question.
"I feel again. I know what it is to feel again," he thought.
"And you didn't always?" came another question, passing through his mind.
"No, I thought I had lost the ability to feel anything forever," he answered.
"Your spirit lives," another thought commented. "Your spirit lives," it repeated.
"Yes," he found himself thinking. "I guess you could say that my spirit is alive again. It has been dead, but now it is alive again."
"Good," came a thought. "Good."
There was a pause. They continued to regard each other, and the figure seemed to be smiling, he thought. If I could force the muscles of my face, I'd be smiling too, he thought. I feel as if I've learned to walk again, or just received the ability to see, after having been blind since birth. He felt exhilarated. His mind reached toward the sky, and he rejoiced in the ability to feel again, even if it remained beyond his capacity to communicate that feeling.
Gradually he returned to earth and saw his self was now crouching on one knee beside the field. In the scene, the wind seemed to have picked up and the weather-dried leaves were swirling here and there.
"Winter's in the air," a thought came.
"Yes, I can feel it as well," he thought in return.
"Come with me," the figure beckoned.
"Where shall we go?" he thought back.
"To a place where it's always spring, and where you can be whenever you want to be," the figure answered.
"I'd like that," he found himself thinking. "Yes," he reflected, "I think I'd like that."
"Come, then," the figure said, holding out a hand toward him.
"How?" he asked. "I cannot leave this chair. Surely you know."
"But you can leave the body," the figure said.
"The body?" he asked.
"Yes," his self said. "Leave the body. Come with me."
And he felt the scene again starting to revolve, as his mind started to turn on its axis.
"You have done it before, my friend," came a thought. "This time, just let go. Just let go," the words repeated in his mind.
The scene was spinning faster and faster in his mind. Again, he felt the dizziness starting to overtake him and he wondered if he would be able to continue, or if he might have to return to his limited reality.
"Let go," a thought came. "Let go," it repeated. "Let go."
He felt his consciousness spinning faster and faster, and faster and faster, and he thought he could no longer stand it, but he let it continue, and finally he felt a sensation of rising. He felt like his mind was still spinning, but that it was now spiraling upward.
"Good," came a now familiar thought. "Good. Let go."
Suddenly he found himself standing in the fall scene. He looked for the other, but he was not there. He looked back toward the home and saw his body, sitting and staring emptily out into the field.
A few flakes of snow were starting to fall. There was winter in the air.