Last night I dreamt of Lalo. It was one of those strange, dark dreams that I’ve taken to have over the past few years. Lalo was very serious and he said, “I have something very important to tell you.” The content of his message had to do with one of those moral struggles one constantly has. I must do this, I must behave in this way, I must allow this or that. Most

of what he said I forgot the moment I awoke. That’s how dreams are. I can’t help let the years I’ve studied psychology affect my analysis of the dream content. It is, as Freud himself would say, simple wish fulfillment. A close figure that has departed to a superior plane of existence comes back from among the dead to offer me moral guidance. Obvious. The message simply gives me permission to do what I wanted to do from the beginning (but now with authorization from heaven). Well! But the other part of the dream is more vital to me. Later, Lalo was lying on his bed, like before he died, and I was kneeling by his side and started to sob uncontrollably, apologizing for not having known how to talk with him. For not having had the courage to express the sorrow that overwhelmed me, fearing his rejection or his anger. What I’m most sorry about, and what makes me cry to this day, is that I couldn’t be myself with him. The resentment is against myself and against him, for not wanting to talk about the subject of his disease or his death, even if it was selfish of me. There nothing to do about that anymore. I can’t sit at his bedside again and, instead of pretending that I’m reading something or merely keeping him company, tell him how incredulous I was –and am- at his having cancer. That I miss him, that he is needed, that life changed forever and that I refuse to accept it. Here, too, the dream fulfills a wish. I can cry by his side and apologize for my cowardice. I miss you tremendously, Lalo, and always will. That cliché about the gap that people leave behind when they go is too real. You can almost stick your hand in it and let yourself be devoured by that dark vortex, that black hole that is constantly with us from the moment a death occurs. You’re no longer here, you no longer exist, and there is a void in space. A blurry image where there used to be color. The devastation of the new scenery makes it impossible to forget what has happened. Dear Lalo, because my words fail me again, let me steal some inspiration from Sabines, even if it makes you angry:

Let me rest,

loosen the muscles of the heart
and let the soul slumber
to be able to talk,
to remember these days,
the longest in time.
"Something about the Death of Major Sabines", Part I, 1973

Gloria Padilla Sierra