Thirteen Crucifixions, 98

He couldn’t remember what he’d just dreamt.  He was having a conversation with someone.  He wanted to tell Doris something.  He’d heard somewhere that she was a writer.  He wanted to ask her something about writing.  He had a sudden need, a desire to write.  He didn’t know what.  He would have to learn how.  He was sufficiently literate, but writing was something that he didn’t do, had almost never done.  He was already prepared to hear this advice from the psychiatrist he’d be seeing tomorrow.  At sixteen, a social worker had scooped him off the street and parked him in a group home.  He was processed through a whole entourage of counsellors, every single one of whom had told him to keep a journal.  He had made several efforts, all of them false starts.

            “Doris?”

            “Yes?”

            “Tell me something please.”

            “Certainly.”    

            “What do you know about journaling?”

            “Not journalism?”

            “No.  Journaling.”

            “Like keeping a personal diary?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I imagine it can be very useful at times.  Have you ever done it?”

            “I’ve tried.”

            “And you’d like to try again.”

            “I think I need to.  I think I just told you that I was clinically dead after I’d tried to kill myself.”

            “I am glad to see that you are now very much alive.”

            “Thanks.”

            “Stephen, please, may I share something with you, please?  Something very personal, that I’ve never shared with anyone.”

            “Sure.”

            “Many years ago, I tried to kill myself.”

            “Oh.”

            “I was very unhappy about not being able to have children.  So, I overdosed on sleeping pills.”

            “No kidding.”

            “And, I also, was clinically dead.”

            “No way!”

            “And, while I was gone, I distinctly recall someone confronting me, some kind of shining being.  I’ll never, for as long as I live, forget this. And this voice asked me why I had tried to take what wasn’t mine.  Then I was sent back.  You see, Stephen, this way I learned this most critical of lessons.  That life is a gift and that it is given to us with certain conditions, it is given to us in trust.  Only once we have accepted this, and begin sharing with others, and with the world, do our lives begin to have any real meaning.  Stephen.  Please.  Never forget this.”