Episode 101 - An Impossible Reality

In the last episode, I described a most unusual dream that I had. My father had been dead for almost six months and I dreamt that he appeared to me, looking alive and happy. He told me that his death wasn’t real, that it was just a trick. And he went on to explain that there really isn’t such a thing as death, it’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about him.

Then he noticed that I was wearing his black star sapphire ring. He told me he didn’t want me to wear it anymore and, in the dream, I gave it back to him. At that point, a tremendous light appeared and everything dissolved into it. The light carried a wonderfully warm sense of happiness and joy in it and I woke up in an extremely elevated state of mind.

Let’s pick up the story there.

I began my day as usual. As I drove to school, I reflected on the dream from a psychological perspective. My second semester of psychology was almost over, and the mysterious workings of the mind were really starting to fascinate me.

As I thought about it, I was quite impressed with this dream as it had been a perfect mental placebo for me. In the theater of my mind, my father looked great. Healthy and smiling, he said he had never really died, and that it was only a PR stunt. He called it a gimmick, which I loved. It was a term he used a lot in the early days of the team, but I had forgotten all about it. Yet it was exactly the way he used to talk. Indeed, everything about him was familiar, comforting and reassuring. In short, he was just the way I would have wanted him to be if he were alive.  

And there was also a strong God theme running through it, which made perfect sense because I was getting so much religious exposure every day. As the dream ended, I had seen this beautiful light, filled with an essence of peace, happiness, and contentment. I felt like I was finally coming back home and experienced an overwhelming love. Then I merged into it. It was all classic heaven stuff.

I didn’t know what to make out of my father’s ring though. I had given it back to him and it had turned into light, which started the whole heaven part. It probably had some subconscious meaning and I figured that I’d bring it up with my psychology teacher.

Anyway, as far as dreams go, it had been a real beauty. And if my mind’s purpose was to comfort me and bring me a little happiness and peace, it had certainly done its job. I felt great in the dream. And as a matter of fact, I was still feeling rather elevated from it as I drove along. 

When I got to the school parking lot, I took the ring off and looked at it. I liked it, but I always felt a little odd wearing it. I had just turned seventeen, and it was the type of thing you’d see on a fifty-year-old man.

I didn’t care, though. It was his, and I was going to wear it for the rest of my life and give it to my kids. I put it back on and went into school.

 

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It was a Friday morning, and I had gym first period. When I got to my locker, I followed my usual routine. I wore two rings, a gold initial ring, and his black star sapphire. I took them both off and put them carefully inside my wallet, next to a ten-dollar bill I had brought because I was going to buy a new basketball after school.

I took off my wristwatch, wrapped it around my wallet, and put the whole thing in one of my shoes. Then, I put my books on top of my shoes and locked my locker. I double-checked the door and the lock to make sure it was all secure.  I had been doing the same routine twice a week for five years and I was confident that it was as tight as a drum.

It was a beautiful May morning, and I played touch football with my friends, a bunch of jovial, eleventh-grade jocks. After gym ended, I took a shower and got dried off. Then, I opened my combination lock, swung open my locker door, and put my clothes on. I took the books off the top of my shoes, took out my wallet, removed my watch, and put it on my wrist. Then I opened my wallet to put on my rings, and the world stopped.

To my extreme shock and disbelief, my father’s ring was gone!

Everything else was exactly as I had left it. My gold initial ring and the ten-dollar bill were still there, undisturbed. But his black star sapphire ring, the one I had given him in the dream just a few hours earlier, was gone. It had disappeared without a trace.

All I can say is that suddenly, reality didn’t make any sense. What had just happened, quite simply could not have happened. It just wasn’t possible. My head started spinning and I felt disoriented. I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and tried to pull myself together. To make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I went over all the details again to see if I had made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I remembered everything precisely.

“Somebody must have stolen it,” I thought for a second, but obviously, that wasn’t the case. The locker had clearly been undisturbed when I came back after my shower. The combination lock was still locked, and the door was untouched. And besides, why would someone steal just that one ring and leave the wallet, the watch, and the gold ring, not to mention the ten-dollar bill?

I thought about the dream again. It was now nine in the morning and I had only been awake for a couple of hours, so everything was still completely fresh in my mind.

I realized how strange the whole thing had been. I didn’t remember feeling drowsy at all or ever falling asleep and then, all of a sudden, I was back in the synagogue chapel. And there had been nothing dreamlike about it at all. Actually, I had never felt more awake in my life. And on top of that, unlike my usual dreams, it hadn’t faded one bit. Normally, I forget my dreams before I even start breakfast. But this time, I could remember every single detail, especially my father’s tan, smiling face.

He said that he hadn’t really died and that it was a trick. Then he had me give him back his ring. When we held it, it turned into a brilliant light. And now, just a few hours later, in real life, it had vanished into thin air. What can I say? What had just happened just wasn’t possible.

Still dazed, I sat in front of my locker for a few more minutes and then the bell rang. I knew I had to hustle because my next class was all the way on the other side of school. There was nothing left to do but get on with my day.

My logic had hit a brick wall and as I got up and started walking, I still felt completely out of sorts. But as I hurried along, I noticed that everything felt just a little bit lighter, as if the old bounce was starting to come back into my step.

 

                                         ***

 

A few days later, it was time for me to go visit my grandfather, my father’s father, and I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about the dream I’d had, followed by the seemingly otherworldly disappearance of the ring.

We had always had quite a deep relationship, but it got much deeper after my father died. He and my grandmother lived about twenty minutes away and for one reason or another we would see them at least once a week.

After I had my first strange dream experience, where I had the precognitive dream that my father had died and it all came true the next day, I told the experience to just a few family members and some very close friends. Along with all the sadness we all felt, many people also felt a little extra sympathy for me because I was the youngest, and most of the ones I told about the dream just shrugged it off, as something that either didn’t happen, or at least not the way I had remembered it. But not my grandfather. He believed every bit of it, completely.

Now, before I tell you his reactions to the dream-ring-disappearance sequence, let me fill you in a little bit about him, as he was quite a unique individual. Although I haven’t mentioned him in the podcasts very frequently, he was one of the main influences on me in the younger part of my life, and is a central figure in “Wilt, Ike & Me,” the memoir that I’ve written about those early days.

We all called him Zayde, which is the Yiddish term for grandfather. Although he was still the patriarch of our extended family, my father, who was his eldest son and a prominent attorney and businessman, had assumed most of the family’s worldly responsibilities. But still, Zayde remained the undisputed spiritual head of the family. That respected position never changed.

And on the spiritual side, he certainly had the credentials for it. He had grown up in Lithuania as an orthodox Yeshiva student and as a gifted singer, he was being trained to become a cantor. In the Jewish tradition, the rabbi leads the service and gives the sermon, but the cantor is the one who actually sings the prayers. And ideally, he should sing them with so much understanding and feeling in his heart, that the prayers go straight up to heaven.

Zayde could really do it, but he had to give up his lofty profession when his family fled to America. His young wife had gotten pregnant, and he had to make a living, so he became a wallpaper hanger. Eventually he opened a paint and paper store in South Philadelphia and he and his family lived in the small living quarters above the store. He still remained true to his orthodox religion though, carefully practicing all of its customs and traditions. But on top of that and somewhat secretly, he was essentially a mystic, with a deep understanding of the more arcane elements of the faith.   

You could see it whenever you looked at him. There was a twinkle in his pale-blue eyes and he always seemed to have a funny look on his face, like he was learning some kind of deep lesson and was ready to burst out either laughing or crying, or sometime,  a funny kind of combination of both.    

Along with all his training, both traditional and esoteric, he had evolved some of his own theories about the cosmos, as well. He said God was always pulling humanity closer and closer to him, and the new communication technologies - radio, movies, and TV, were all a part of a great divine plan. Bear in mind that none of them had existed in his early life, not even electricity.

He had seen them all develop and to him, they had been created to help teach humanity profound lessons, enabling it to achieve its highest potential.

Now, this is actually a great place to end this episode. Of course, there’s a lot more to come, so, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.