Dreams and memories

Hey everyone. Hope you all are having a fabulous week. I keep writing about these super-realistic, complex dreams that I have been having lately, but the one I had this morning as I was waking up was a doozy. It was more of a memory in great detail. It was a memory of one of the worst days of my life, and I hadn’t even thought about it in 25 to 30 years.

Maybe I tried to block it out, but today my brain decided I needed to remember all of it.

Between the dream and my actual memory, I will try my best to put these thoughts in some kind of coherent order. I apologize in advance if this is too personal or me using this platform to work out my shit is too much for you. But it is what it is. When I sit down to write, I write what is on my mind — and this is sitting heavy on me today.

I think I was 7, maybe 8 years old, and my mom was pregnant. I actually might have been 5 or 6. I could ask my mother but don’t want to bring up this subject with her. We were at my Aunt Dorsey’s house on Jean Street in Pleasant Grove. The house had a huge mimosa tree in the front yard. (I had to look that tree up to see what it was called.) Mimosa trees look very tropical, with fluffy pink pom-pom like flowers. The leaves look like ferns that fold into themselves at night.

I remember seeing those mimosa trees everywhere when I was a kid, but I don’t remember seeing one in years now.

I remember trying to catch crawdads in the ditch out in front of their house. We would take a piece of hot dog or bologna and tie it to a string, sink it down into the holes around the ditch and try to yank the crawdad out of the hole once it latched onto the piece of meat. Most of them were just ugly, muddy-brown-colored crawdads, but on this particular day, I caught one with blue-tinted claws. My jerk-faced cousin, Eddie Paul, snatched it from me and told everyone that he caught it.

So I climbed up the mimosa tree and pouted. Eddie Paul was my biggest bully, and I’m pretty sure I hated him. But we were always at their house. I guess we went wherever we could that had a babysitter so my mom could work. My great-grandmother, Mummo, lived with my Aunt Dorsey and watched us a lot. I am pretty sure I am spelling their names wrong, but that is how I remember saying their names.

Mummo died a long time ago, and my aunt died a few years back. Once I left home as a teenager, I didn’t see them hardly at all, and lost touch with my aunt completely. I’d get an update on her and her kids from my mom every once in a while but I had so many bad memories of Eddie Paul that I had to force myself to care.

On this day, my mom was very pregnant — I think about 8 months, but I’m not sure. I remember her having a big belly but not huge. She was laying down because she didn’t feel good. I was in the bathroom next to the bedroom she was resting in when I heard her scream in pain. It was the worst sound I had ever heard in my life. I heard that scream in my dream this morning like it was happening right then.

I went to the bedroom door as everyone was running in and saw her pull back the covers. There was blood everywhere and what looked like a clump of blood. I think that, at the time, I thought it was poop, my young brain not being able to process the situation.

I think my dad was there, but I’m not 100 percent certain of that. I know they were fighting a lot at the time, and they yelled at each other so much that I hated it when they were around each other. But I think he is the one who took her to the hospital.

I didn’t say anything to my mom as they carried her out of the house. I flattened myself up against the wall in the hallway to try to make myself as flat and as invisible as possible.

It all happened so fast: One second there was a house full of people — aunts, cousins, grandparents — all being so loud. And the next second, there was silence. The quiet was horrible. The only people left in the house were me, my baby sister Brandy, who was crying quietly on the couch, Eddie Paul and a woman named Peggy.

I think Peggy was a cousin on my Aunt Dorsey’s husband’s side of his family. So she was no blood relation to me, and thank God for that. I was not fond of Peggy. Peggy was the living embodiment of Miss Piggy— a big, thick woman with blonde hair and a really wide, slightly upturned nose. She smoked almost constantly, pulling her cigarettes out of her little beige cigarette purse.

A few hours later, someone called from the hospital, and Peggy talked to them for a second then hung up. I was standing right next to her, waiting to hear if my mother and the baby were okay.

She turned to me with absolutely no compassion or warmth and said very plainly, “Welp, the baby died. No little brother for you.”

Then she turned and waddled back to watch TV like nothing had happened.

That’s how I found out the baby was a boy. I ran after her to ask how my mom was doing and if she was gonna be okay. She said, “Your mama is going to be fine.” I remembered thinking, “No she won’t. I’m not sure if she will ever be fine again.”

My mom named him Jason David Love. I’m embarrassed to say I have always been jealous of that name. It is such a great name. And J.D. is such a cool nickname. I’m jealous that he got to have David be part of his name.

In our family, the name David is a big deal. It was my Pawpaw’s name. My uncle and his son are both Davids. My cousin Jeremy’s middle name is David, and I think a few other cousins have it for a middle name.

I should have been James David, but my dad’s best friend when I was born was named Gary. I don’t remember Gary; they weren’t friends by the time I started to remember things. James Gary Love — horrible.

I’m so stupid being jealous of a name of a brother I never got to know, never got to argue with, never got to defend. Would we have been close? Would we have even liked each other? Would he have been smart or a good father? Who knows?

I am not sure why the universe put that dream in me, but I need to call my mamma.

Remember to always love more, bitch less and be fabulous. XOXO, Cassie Nova