Death: A Character with Scope
I had another one of these dreams; a new type that is rather rare but has been the most difficult to process through. A nightmare. It’s still not the easiest for me to talk about. I don’t know what to say about what happened back there—pre-four years old. Nor can I…I was four. What can one say about how a baby feels? Their understanding of things? All the same, I didn’t quite know what to do with these dreams…they were the sharpest, the feelings that could bring me down, in a real way, having to reject them, quite frankly. No, it was just a no.
Am I a hypocrite? A terrible human being? Untalented? Unworthy? What the hell was this? Is my mother reading my stuff? Instagram told me last year, I found the page, to block two accounts, one of which I was blocked from. Why am I feeling such intensity around publishing something that really happened? Or, anything? Am I picking up on something? A website is a public space. Regardless, I had to work through these feelings.
Luckily, I had Death, the psychological device, who came in at the end in my dreams to help me through it, though it took a half a day for me to recover from it. He could point to any character dead or alive coming through my head like a blade. Do you want to see yourself, do you? Death—do you want that kind of honesty? He, she, they, is going to show you exactly who you are. I wasn’t afraid of that. He was a device to outsmart my own psychology: mirrors, I mean, what people see when they looked into a mirror?
Do you want to take a criminal? An artist is not a criminal, he looked at me. Please, he couldn’t. Not with the stories he’s seen. I was a sensitive and powerful person, he only encouraged me. This character, in my head, was soothing, because people say a lot of things, they have ideas. What made mine wrong? What made one’s ideas truer than another’s? Especially about me, myself. Now, truly, what made one’s ideas truer than another’s? This was a complicated, complex statement.
No one knew me better than myself, stop.
Who knows what I was picking up on, if I was? No one has directly told me they’ve been reading my work, so maybe no one has. What’s the big deal if you’re great? Death held this perspective on me. Though I am still dealing with my fundamental idea-set, my life has never been better. I have real results to show for it. I am making more money than I ever have. Relatively speaking, I don’t know what that means case to case, but for me, it was a sign.
In terms of what that meant for my parents, these dreams would come around a certain feeling of being messed with…glitches, especially around technology. Like an IMDB credit that randomly appeared on my page about a girl named Maria…in a Neapolitan film called The Vice of Hope…who trafficks surrogate mothers. “It was your mother,” my friend had no doubt. My hypnotherapist? These were your guides. All the same, I really did feel that way, very young, and if someone was really messing with me, they were dealing with a four-year-old, basically. Dr. J. She really was, wasn’t she? Messing with me? Her fault? I do not operate in this framework. I went after a dead baby as a child—her.
Think about that, Death said.
Let’s take criminal, once again. Let’s take a look at what their lives were like, very young. My ideas weren’t bad, not to Death. What did I do, what did a child do, to deserve this feeling? These were real.
You see, then, I return to the very real feeling that the 5 AM message that I received last year was really intended for me. The one that spawned the Mother’s Day 2021 battle of my soul. Yes, Death, he said, I could say no, considering where I was in time and space, to him. I could get through anything, he assured me. What did this meant for my parents, or just for the fact I was repressed for a long time? I was getting there.
At least, my psychological device could deal with all these questions. My hypnotherapist friend said, you have to deal with “I don’t know” just due to how memory works.
Was this person reading my work—the person I was afraid sent me this message? Who cares? I was troubled by what I was experiencing and feeling because why would this person, who didn’t do it, care? Was that, was that what I was feeling? I figured it might have been my mother, or simply, my fear of her…who had suddenly started showing her face indirectly because I was on a cover of a magazine, excuse me.
I don’t know what to say. I was haunted, in a way, by two people. This is where my healing process began: in the middle of the night. Just sharing the story about the Ukrainian refugee, I felt attacked in my dreams. It sent me into a state of turmoil. I didn’t understand. I didn’t want these feelings.
Back in time:
Death sat me down—once we were able to get back to my pink room, on the pink carpet, with the pink blinds…a lounging lioness framed above him, his eyes through the shadows of my pink blinds. We spent a long time here. Just ending up back here, all these years later.
I was staring into the only mirrors left from my mother’s office…the closet.
“The people in your head,” he said, “are simply wrong about you.”
Sorry, Death wasn’t one to get caught up in projections or limited understanding of things. There was no limitation to the self…not from his perspective. He had been a part of every story ever told. What he had seen—what was possible? Impossible? Would I like to meet St. Jerome, even, since I went to this school? Please, he said, please. Real, not real, true, fiction—whatever, Death is there. Separation is an illusion, sure. He lived there.
“Merrily merrily merrily,” he said to me, in the back of the Cutlass, on the way back home from this four-year fiasco. “Life is but a dream.” It was he who pointed out the significance of that statement, taking a look around. Oh, a song for children? So you lie to your children? Think about it. My culture, especially, our point of view on dreams was a crack up. “The American dream,” on top of it.
Later he said to my younger self, “but there are distinctions, did you understand that? Okay, good.”
Up the stairs, to skip ahead, coming back to a house exploding, the mirrors being smashed off the walls, I didn’t feel anything. It took time. I had my understanding, my version of the story that I was attached to.
The wise screenwriter had asked me, “what’s the feeling here?” I didn’t know. He understood that.
Death was inspired by the wise screenwriter, which he knows, the hypnotherapist I worked with, and my lifelong passion for psychology.
I made a decision as a child.
My father’s fear of death, because it was terrifying, was the real root of whatever was happening to him. I would “befriend this concept called death,” at nine years old, not thinking much about it. And, all these years later, that idea became a character…in the corner of my pink room to help me through it. To me at nine? Sure, it was credible. At least.
Time? To Death? I never had a linear perception of it. It doesn’t “really exist,” but it does, Death had to let me know. It had a function, of course, in keeping us organized, focused here. But yes, we navigate through time in more complex ways than “meets the eye.” Time, he taught me a lot…taking me back to the Roman forum at sunset in the summers watching the sparrows fly and sway as one body of many around the ancient columns.
“Time flies,” he said. It could fly in so many ways, and I knew that. I was right.
Just a dazzling, Death, so impressive. It was his job. I wanted to write an extraordinary character, you know, the type you’d read about in a book. There was no other death than the one I wanted—okay?
“When you’re old and grey and full of sleep,” I repeated that with him and—
“I have seen Gods die to become extraordinary men and I have seen ordinary men die to become extraordinary men.”
Death had strong ideas, what can I tell you? But that line: I cannot give Death credit for. He loved it though. I’ll give myself the credit, but the way this line came through me was remarkable.
Radical, please. Death? I thought I could move nonlinearly? Please. He was a master psychologist, just by nature of what that idea implies. He was a master storyteller, too. I, quite honestly, felt there was a lot to learn from an idea like that. In terms of my undercover investigation into the Catholic Church, which I really did: Death exists regardless of one’s religion or belief system. Now, what “it” is—not my concern. “I’m just a door,” he said.
“Energy cannot be destroyed,” Death said. This is a basic fact.
I was able, also thanks to the wise screenwriter, to begin to deal in terms of energy. It helped a lot. Hallucinations, psychic visions, in my opinion, who else but Death? He’s there, regardless. Death, I workshopped, if you would, with this character. I meditate, etc. Did I fancy a supernatural conceit? He was looking at me.
He came with me…on my undercover investigations…I was writing a book, but I was working on a lot of material, no? I am a writer. This is what I do, what I like to do, what I want to do. I was still a child in many ways, and I needed a little internal support, just working with my psychology.
My mother was a pathological liar.
At the exclusive tennis club where I interrogated the Brazilian woman who took me home for four years, Death was by the pool.
“Ghastly,” he said.
You can be in the dark in broad daylight, which it was, very bright in my memory. “It’s true,” he said, making me consider the image I was in. “Not in a cloud in the sky, the color of her eyes,” he knew. Everything from your perspective, wasn’t that what the statement implied?
“Your whole life flashes before your eyes?”
He had seen many things, many kids go through extraordinary things, hm? He had no emotion; it was a projection, though he could express it. He had nothing to do with what happened to a Man. He had seen people tell him—no. He wasn’t a human character, but he was inseparable from the human experience in a sense…in the back of the Cutlass.
As a child, I could talk to someone in this way, and yet, I never told anyone.
I was challenging my father with scrawny arms about topics such as “illegitimate children” having uncovered my parents wedding photograph in the “Lutheran Church,” I rolled my eyes at the man. I did basic math. Not my shame, man.
Death was making sense to me, in the backseat, giving his point of view on all this. It was all the present moment to him.
“Impossible? Things are happening every day.”
Just a song, just a story. Moving on.
If we think about it, “your whole life flashes before your eyes,” this is an idea we have, or some of us. How would this all line up? Which life? I was attached, not understanding that, to a storyline. There were others. What does it take to change? Really? He didn’t find my childhood questions dismissible. Will the system defend itself?
He found me at certain ages to begin. It was the function that I gave this character as an experiment. At twelve years old, he pinpointed me outside my house, my child psychologist pulling up.
“Outside already?”
He cocked his head under a lamppost in the shape of a teardrop.
He made his way to the back of the car.
I was typing.
”There are probably many…”
“Reasons?!”
He interjected.
She came over that day…
I brought my hands off the keys.
I stared at that sentence. Death was in this car.
It was a final lunch we had. I had never gone through it. Not since.
My father had stopped our sessions: he couldn’t afford it anymore and I wasn’t changing. Rolling my eyes at her, “wasn’t this my job?” Seriously. I was a child, no? I was resolved on the point of my mother. Okay? At ten years old.
At twelve in the scene, on the page as an adult, I couldn’t do it. Death was in the back of the station wagon. I didn’t know what to do because it was a repressed memory. “The dark material.” I had to go through the scene.
“Many reasons she came over that day…”
Keep it, he said. Keep it.
My mother was a pathological liar: I’ll say it again. Even going through my memories was tricky. Is this true? I also had mysterious experiences! I had to go through the scene! There was no such thing as time to this character, so patience?
I got into the car. He had balloons in the back seat. They were vivid, fuzzy even.
It was hard to tell my story to myself due to the “disbelief” energy, my mother, my father. These liars. With a character like Death, we could go through how many lies we live in that were considered true. Death had a higher perspective. I was reaching for it. I did a lot of “unbelievable things?” To Death? Please. I wasn’t that special.
Even if I brought up what was going on beneath the surface, it was still true. Even if I invented something from the real… it was still true.
After this scene, to skip, I realized I had made a decision. I told my child psychologist and “clever,” that word to him, cleverly, I had convinced her to let me stay.
Yes, I got out of that with her. I wasn’t going to foster care.
Death closed the door. I shocked me, as an image, a sound. I was coming to realize what I did: to stay in this with my father. It was a rough night.
Death was clean, he just closed it. I had to deal with my feelings…these years coming to light. And the thing is, it was necessary to go through my feelings for the sake of my health. Who gave a shit if I died or not? Be real. A few people? I did. Sorry, not sorry, Death? Would you like to hear a tragic tale? Truly, I would never insult this character.
Trauma, people do not understand, how much it can affect your health, for the love of. Trust me, I got real with myself. I let go of a lot of “storylines,” I assure you.
Now, take a criminal. Wonder what Death thinks? I did.
“Want things to change?”
“Really?” It was Death’s question.
The body had a miraculous ability to heal. It was true. I used this device to work on my focus. He had? One point of focus—he wasn’t dealing with anyone but me, no? This was “everything from my perspective.” On the subject of time…it could speed up, slow down, right? Wasn’t it a basic experience?
(I had done these exercises with my hypnotherapist.)
My father used to say—he had no idea where the time went. He struggled with his old age, and I had to be his psychologist quite frankly, at times. It was rare, but his pitiful, oh…he was sick, the whole time. I cannot help what Alzheimer’s is, what people can do despite their conditions and conditioning, excuse me.
Death brought me back to St. Jerome’s School.
These children supported me. They helped me through a dark time of wrestling with my parents. They knew who my father was. Back then. The boys of St Jerome’s School had no qualms approaching my father’s vehicle, investigating it, because my father’s “classic cars” were a thing.
Soares: “there’s a bat in the back of the trunk!”
With his basketball, he pleaded with me to face the facts, Casper.
I was in the mafia.
Seriously, everyone agreed.
Cruz, the first time he saw my father coming up the hill, screeched.
“Your father is the Fonz!”
“Stephanie!”
He lost it, bouncing down the hill, and confronting him directly on the subject.
Williams was one of my best friends, I said, though he didn’t use these terms. We were usually talking on the bench after-school. Stroking his chin, transparently, after this Nativity Scene in the sixth grade, he wondered. “So, do you like,” he used air-quotes, “Tyler?” He played what? A Wise Man. I opened up to him the most about my life… He was psychologically inclined, one of the smartest people I had ever met. He was so funny. He would have to communicate that he was making fun of me. I would chase him! It was ridiculous to him. But he did it so well! I would beam at him. I told him he had elegant hands.
He knows, he knows—I told him. “No filters between realities” came into my head at twelve years old about Dr. J. We had conversations about her. I took it slow. I appreciated him so much, especially during the process I went through L.
He met Dr. J, which I had forgotten about. Death knew. I knew, but I had repressed this time.
“We will talk,” he said.
We were in the back of their Mercedes with him in the Ladera Shopping Center. The leather smelled like butter. I was at that age, again, maybe for the first time, feeling it? We were picking up Williams to meet Dr. J.
“Now, did it matter if the car picked us up directly at St Jerome’s?” Death wondered. “Or,” passing the street to turn right at, “did we need to go to my house and be factually true about it?”
Did it matter, really? Did it discredit my story?
The hang-ups I had: we continued towards the school, already there, the ground moving. Did I see his point? He was friggin’ Mary Poppins.
This character was there, through it all, who cared? I would just delete him out of Christmas in Naples is a Sport? Or, would I? There was a place for him in such a city, all the same. Death in? Naples, why not. He couldn’t even in the back of this Mercedes. In any case, I loved this character and this idea…he would get his own story. He, she, they.
I still used him to work out my feelings through Christmas in Naples is a Sport as I was writing it. I was going through it. What was my experience just “being in a family?” It got dark, for sure. “Not turning on lights?” Really? He could pop up, especially when I was “alone.”
This was good, he said.
I didn’t want to disturb anyone. My Neapolitan relatives know me a little better now, they know that I have weird hang-ups. Even that, this character encouraged me to share my feelings. Just, try. It became a wonderful feeling, the idea of being able to be messy, getting upset, without giving a shit no longer afraid.
“MERI,” Angela gestured to the invisible thing, “do not invent things that are not there. I am not asking you to leave.” I shared the most with her, and she heard me. Oh, did I overstay my welcome, I’ll just leave. I didn’t want to cause any problems. Normalizing the experience of family, what it meant to stay together, even if my construction was a little different, I had to figure it out. I dealt with my “adopted issues,” trust me, but I wasn’t adopted. This was also Death.
I was trying to describe this character in the beginning, because I was just getting to know it, and the way he came into existence was somewhat amazing to me, though writing is a magical act or can be. He was direct, which makes sense. I appreciate being able to say there is so much a person can do to help themselves through.
I was about thirty when we met in a memory that occurred ten years before. He took me back ten years into the past through it. I trusted this character—he would take advantage of no one. A consummate professional, Death. You cannot sway him, manipulate him, “mind games,” he would say. There was no “winning,” not in this case. No man was clever. Good, I thought.
“He’s purely present,” and he corrected me straight away.
“Strictly,” he said. “Strictly present.”
I confused pure and strict, without fail, for quite some time. I still do it, from time to time. Less and less. He suggested that I—“adopt it.”
“A hallucination is?”
“A purely sensational…”
“Strictly,” Death didn’t have to make his point. You did it for him.
“A strictly sensational form of consciousness.”
“William James…”
I would repeat it. “A strictly sensational form of consciousness.”
I was pure and he was strict. The idea that I was “loved” was a silly attachment. “But this is why we love you,” and my pain? What about that? Who did I want to be, I had a choice? He believed in me as an artist, and these people? Did they? Well, he held no regard for them. I mean, some did, it wasn’t that, but remember, he was me. I was dealing with my own conflicts. But would people be affected by what I just wrote?
“Others,” it wasn’t about them. It was about me.
To me, “Death” would be an idea to learn from, a guide, and in many cultures it’s simply the case. He was a master psychologist, a part of every story ever told.
Your whole life flashes before your eyes.
New memories, new points in time, opened up the more I got into touch with me feelings…how I was arranging all these pieces changed. I was inspired by what was possible, how ways it could go, and what did he say? The idea that one’s imagination would turn against them? It didn’t have to be that way.
So, no, he pointed at me: “adopt it.”
“What wasn’t spiritual?”
Even if he was…a fictional character.
He was love without an agenda—and it’s true, Death had none. He didn’t have to move. He didn’t “go” anywhere. He understood, looking at me as a child, down there, because I was one. I mean, me interviewing one of my mother’s lovers at ten years old? He was by the water cooler.
That’s a little about this character—and the thing is, I had been touched by many characters real and invented, even those who were inspired by real people, I do not know. Characters touched me. Strangers helped me, so I thought—especially reading The Giver, ah, there’s a lot a character can do. So, thank you.
My psychological device worked; that’s all I know, but a battle of the soul? Death couldn’t help me to a certain point. He could not interfere. But when you’re old and grey and full of sleep… and not at the hands of any Man, sure, or ailment. We could do that. I don’t know what to say about Mother’s Day 2021. There was nothing I could not do. And yes, we would take a look at the bigger picture, too.
Re-member me.
This character took me back to this moment, or at least, he accompanied me, walking up the stairs, reaching the end of the first draft I attempted. I had tried before, but it was different this time. In twelve hours, I recited it. I didn’t stop. I had to just get to the end—“don’t stop,” this character said.
“There are proper ends,” he reassured me.
I saw my four-year old for the first time in the very same spot where I had heard this phrase in my own head: remember me, before I left for these four years I spent in another home.
“She’s not dead?”
It was my question. It was a vivid picture as if I were eternally there. It was step one…the mirrors back on the walls, this time, in an empty room.
“No, she’s not.”
Two and half years later, I just finished a draft Christmas in Naples is a Sport—Death appeared on the volcano as he had before at the end. “And ta ta ta,” I wrote, “just like that—we were off like hat towards a bright future. A point of focus, that’s what it is.”
Again, I can just edit him out. He has his own story. No enemies. No fre-enemies, either. However you spell that word. Zero. Only the brightest, most loving, and supportive future ahead of me.
Imagine more success, Death said. “Get hotter,” etc. Healthier, happier, saner. I have never been more healthier, happier, and saner. It was my meditation. That’s Death and me.