Strange dream last night. It was in two parts. I’m not altogether sure whether I dreamed the first part on Friday night and the second last night or if the two parts both happened last night but were interrupted by a period of wakefulness. I wanted to capture it in writing early this morning but haven’t had a chance to put it into print until tonight. I’ve thought about it on and off today, wondering at its meaning. That in itself is unusual. I don’t remember many dreams and don’t typically assign meaning to them. The portent of the scene, though, is inescapable. I will footnote the dream as I recount it.

The scene opens with me in the home of this elderly man. We are watching TV. My partner and one of my brothers are also there. The old man is a new acquaintance in the dream. I don’t know him well and he’s no one in my real life. The reasons I am there are vague, possibly I am there for companionship because he is elderly and he wanted someone to spend time with. In real life I have two younger brothers, and the one in the dream is closest to me in age. We’re all adults in the dream, our current age, but there’s this sense that I’m baby-sitting my brother. He couldn’t be left alone so I had to bring him with me to this old man’s house. It’s like a regressed age relationship going on. My partner is there to observe what happens.

Interestingly the old man reminds me of Shelby Foote. This makes sense in that my partner and I have been re-watching the PBS Civil War documentary by Ken Burns and Foote figures prominently in it. I don’t like him. I find him supercilious. Haughty. Listening to him grates on me. The elderly man in the dream comes across the same way. The TV is on in the background and he hands me a book and says “Take a look at this.”

It’s Great Expectations, the same edition that I saw on my parents’ bookshelf forever and I read when I was young. I was always interested in the book because there was a picture of a child on the front. I pestered my mom to let me read it and she always said it was too old for me. Finally in the 5^th grade I asked again and she told me to go ahead but she didn’t think I would understand much of it (she was right). I remember telling my brother that I was reading a book about a little boy who spends time with an old lady. I also told him that we should start calling the jacks in the deck of cards knaves because that’s what Pip learned from the old lady. (Such was the extent of my understanding of the book.)

In the dream I am flipping through the book and telling my brother about it, only this time giving the book an adult review. Yet I’m still in older sibling mode, telling him all this as if he is hanging onto my every word because I’m older and he thinks I know everything. In the dream he says very little and just listens to me. My partner is off to the side watching. The old man starts talking and one of us asks about his wife.

“She’s dead.” he tells us. “She wouldn’t go to a doctor. She prayed to be healed and she died. I still hate the church for that.”

I can taste his bitterness. The vile in the room is an oozing, thick mucus. He practically shakes with a cold, suppressed rage.

I want to ask more. But I also don’t want to hear the story, hear his bitterness. I think that it’s nice that he at least found another woman to love and marry. She’s been in a couple times to serve us refreshments and inquire after our comfort. I return the book to him and we leave, this woman bidding us farewell as we board the elevator and exit his condo building.

I think that’s the dream I had Friday night. Or it was the early part of last night. The second part of the dream goes like this:

It begins the same with me and my brother and my partner again with the old man watching TV. He hands a book to me again saying “Take a look at this.”

It’s the King James Bible and it’s open to Psalms. When I read the psalm he points to it’s a quote from Shakespeare. This is rather funny because I had checked GA just before bed and one of my friend’s status updates was this Shakespeare quote. So no mystery where this came from. Anyway, it makes perfect sense in the dream for this quote to be in the book of Psalms. I tell my brother that there’s a theory that Shakespeare helped with the translation of the Kings James version. I start flipping through the book, trying to find the psalm that has something about “shaking a spear”.

I notice that the volume of the bible I am holding is actually two books in one and that at the back is the religious text of Christian Scientists, Science and Health. I have a sinking feeling because I remember the old man saying that his wife had died while relying on spiritual healing practices instead of medicinal ones. I had hoped that it was a religion other than Christian Science.

Here in real life, I was brought up in Christian Science along with my brothers. All of us kids left the church as adults. My mother (now divorced from Dad) also left the church but my father is still a practicing Christian Scientist.

Back in the dream, I tell the old man that I see that this Bible has Science and Health appended to the back. He instantly and angrily says that he doesn’t read that part anymore, only the psalms. He jams his finger onto the Shakespeare quote again. The room is filled with that dark, heavy bitterness and anger. I don’t know what to say about his wife dying as she prayed, maybe as he prayed with her.

Then me and my brother and my partner are being shown to the elevator again and the woman is bidding us farewell. I realize that she’s actually not his wife, she’s a housekeeper. He hasn’t remarried. He’s just sitting there old and lonely and bitter. That’s the end of the dream.

As I thought about it today, I think I know the crux of the dream’s message. Subconsciously I am playing out what is going to happen as my father ages and his health fails. I am of the opinion that Dad should be left to make his own choices as to health care and medical intervention. His body. His choice. My brother has told me he’s not sure how long he can let Dad go without medical care before insisting on intervention. I feel a conflict looming among the three of us. Dad has had some minor health issues already that he’s shared with me but has asked me not to talk to my brothers about. He knows how they feel, particularly the one closest to me in age. Dad doesn’t want the arguments either and I think he wants me to advocate for him.

Here’s the thing. My father is the first person I told about my plans to transition, to change sex. He was first because I knew he would understand to some degree, but I also knew how fervently he believes that adults are free thinkers and should be supported in the decisions they make. He also believes that we each are responsible for the results of our decisions and facing the consequences of those decisions, planned or unplanned. Anyway, he supported me and the choices I made with my body and now he’s counting on me to support him.

The biggest conflict is going to be with the brother who was in my dream. We are on good terms. Even excellent terms. There’s no other conflict between us. Funny how in my dream I was clearly longing for the childhood days when he unquestioningly accepted whatever I said. My partner will be along for the ride in that way spouses are in these sorts of situations. He’ll watch my family drama play out. He’ll talk things out with me privately, but he’ll remain an observer publicly. There’s more interpretation that has run through my mind today, but I think I'll cut this off here.

More than ever I wished I lived in closer proximity to my brothers. I am not great at phone conversations. I like talking about these issues in person. One way or another, I think in the next 24 months the three of us need to be clear on where we each stand with Dad when it comes to medical treatment and start talking about how that is all going to play out as he ages.