“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.” –Maya Angelou

Talking about death

I recently turned to my husband and asked, “When someone dies, can anyone write an obituary for that person?” He replied with a raised eyebrow of curiosity and slight amusement, and a measured tone assuming I would go on, “I’m not sure.” I continued, “I wonder if I should write one for my stepfather…” I wondered if I should write an obituary for my stepfather as an alternative to writing and giving a speech no one has asked me to give at his funeral whenever his funeral takes place.

And I was wondering about obituary versus speech as part of an evolving dialogue I’ve been having with myself about my stepfather’s death. He’s still alive. And like many of our deaths, I have no idea when he will die. And because he’s old, I like to assume he’ll die before me, but even that is unknown. And if this musing about death and worse than death for many, public speaking, has temporarily created  a moment to be grateful for being alive today, this glorious day I have never seen before, I will take that moment and hope you do, too. Today is a glorious day. Today is a gift.

Daydreaming

Many months ago, I began to daydream about speaking at my stepfather’s funeral. As a creative person, I can’t say that I necessarily daydream as much as I did when I was a kid. Daydreaming feels so specific to me, an often unintentional mind wander that for me is not connected to my creative process in a way I can chart. My creative thinking and seeing generates my writing and my art. I feel I am driving that process. Daydreaming is a repetitive and inconclusive process that generates materials that I can’t seem to make use of in a way I know originates back to the daydream. I know there is a purpose for it, I know daydreaming has many wonderful benefits. I’m pro adults daydreaming. But my daydreaming hasn’t been a tool I’ve used to create or to act. My daydreaming maybe has created the matter, the materials I’ve used in other processes that have led to solving a [broad term] problem I’m facing, or maybe I daydream more than I realize unconsciously and it is part of my creative process that I just don’t necessarily consciously recognize I’m accessing as I do with other processes and tools.

Maybe it’s all part of the same process and I’m being too rigid about categorization. Daydreaming and wandering, thinking, touching, smelling, tasting, mind’s eye, seeing the future, sleep dreaming, remembering and forgetting, learning, talking, body movement.

Whatever daydreaming might be, I don’t think I daydream that frequently or that long anymore. I don’t often catch myself daydreaming. Before this funeral speech business, I couldn’t tell you the last daydream I had, let alone recurring daydream. For a daydream to form, maybe that daydream came out of seemingly nowhere. A recurring daydream, for me at least, means intentionally getting into the daydream state and to set in motion the same daydream. And a disruption: are some or all visions of the future daydreams? If a daydream becomes intentional, is it just thought? If a daydream is recurring can it only be intentional? Around the maypole I go.

I have found myself a little surprised that I have been engaging in daydreaming at all, though not surprised about the topic in which my mind has wondered: a public offering from me to an audience about my stepfather when he is dead.

The Daydream

In my daydream, I can never see the audience at my stepfather’s funeral, sometimes I’m at a podium, sometimes it’s just my mind’s voice talking. I know certainly it’s his funeral, though there is no casket or urn or any indicator the space is in honor of him. No one talks to one another or to me…not really. Maybe sometimes there is a sense someone talks to me. I never complete the speech, sometimes the daydream begins with me already in midspeech. Sometimes the daydream is an image like standing up over and over again, glitchy, repetitive. I know I am hesitant if I should give the speech at all, and sometimes I am actually not sure if I will, and other times, I already have a sense that I will give the speech and the repetitive standing up motion is part of my initial nervousness to begin. Sometimes the glitchy repetitive standing up motion happens and the picture continues onward sequentially, or the standing glitchy repetition will occur and the daydream moves to another moment in the daydream entirely.

I know no one has asked me to give a speech. I’m not part of the formal programming and sometimes I give myself a way to approach the podium when, vaguely, there is an invitation from…someone (again, no exact words) to the audience if “anyone else” would like to say a few words. Sometimes, there is no invitation and I know people are surprised I’ve approached the podium. The setting is formal. It is not a celebration of life, it is a funeral and it is sad.

I never fully conclude the speech in my daydream before my mind is taken elsewhere by an interruption from reality–a phone call, my dogs barking, someone calling my name, or I just stop the daydream. How much control do you have over your daydreams? Do you still daydream? What do you daydream about if you still daydream? Do you like daydreaming?

That I never conclude the speech feels like a sleeping dream, and a stress dream at that. You never make it to class, you never catch the bus, you’re running and don’t seem to make any progress, away, toward. But this daydream is not stressful to me at all. It’s okay that I never finish the speech, I don’t think that’s the point. I’m not sure what the point is, but it’s not that.

At certain times throughout the daydream, I feel the response from the audience I cannot see. At different times, slight shock. No one is clutching pearls or standing up to stop me, but they are like, ooohhh, shiiit, and a little confused. At different times, it’s grumbling when the audience begins to understand this is not a typical funeral speech and it’s okay to break the decorum of silence to ask your neighbor, what’s going on? The drum of the audience discussing the unfolding situation. At other times, again, silence as the audience listens to me. What I haven’t felt from the audience, or, what I haven’t allowed the audience to convey to me when I craft this scenario is a feeling of, don’t! Stop! Get off the stage! Not completely. And every once in a while is a feeling that comes to me, from the audience, of recognition, not of anger of what I’m saying, but of recognition, because the audience knows what I am saying is true. They know what I’m saying, they’ve known what I’m saying, and they’re not mad, they’re not ashamed they know, they’re not embarrassed, they’re not in denial, they just know. Not that the audience collectively knows every example or instance or moment that I am discussing, how could they. It’s the only time the audience has a semblance of individuality. The audience has enough exposure where some of what I am saying has been their experience, and extrapolating from the experiences they know are true into other experiences they do not know about firsthand, isn’t hard for them.

Daydreams really can be so deliciously uncomplicated.

In my speech, I do talk about the qualities of my stepfather that I like. But, talking about the best qualities of people, invited or not, doesn’t get an audience to say, *oooohhh, shiiit.

I daydream about the feeling of, I’m about to make up my mind to go up and talk. I’m still deciding. I don’t have anything written down, but I’m prepared. I am still deciding if I’m going to do it. For me, it feels like the feeling right before you plunge full body into water you know is going to be kinda cold and your head is the first to feel the water. Do you have that sensation too when you plunge into water? Do you know what I mean by this?

When I intentionally stop the daydream it’s not because I think it’s morbid and I shouldn’t daydream stuff like funeral speeches for someone who is still alive. I don’t think talking about or thinking about death and funerals is inherently morbid. I don’t have guilt or shame about picturing my stepfather’s funeral, which means I am visioning him dead. I am not wishing to expedite his death in any way. That might be a little morbid and asking for some unkind karma. He’s going to die at some point, we all are. And, I don’t stop the daydream because I think, eh, giving a speech at his funeral? That will never happen so what’s the point of putting in this mental energy. Which can be said about many of our daydreams, right? What we daydream will never happen. But in fact, I actually really do want to fulfill this daydream.

Translation

I don’t want to continue to daydream about the funeral anymore because more often than not, especially since it’s been a recurring daydream, I often mire myself in reality logistics that kicks me out of the daydream state. I’m looking for a piece of paper, or a specific notebook not nearby. In my speech, parsing out what is mine to say about my stepfather and what is not mine to say. How important is it for my speech to discuss parts of who I know him to be that are not my personal lived experience? Do I only want to stick to what I know and experienced? How vital to my speech are the pieces from someone else’s story? Do those pieces create a mechanism that allows for my pieces to work and become a working vision of comprehension of what I want to say? And if my speech cannot exist in the richness of communication I sense when giving it in my daydream without the parts that are not mine, I must get permission to speak these words and would those specific individuals be okay with me saying part of their experience? I don’t know. I have to ask them for permission. And then I think, well, before all that, what exactly do I want to say? What is the speech?

I’m not entirely sure what I want to say. I’m pretty sure what I want to say. What I vision of the speech is nebulous short snaps of a picture, it’s sounds but not always words and I know what I see in my mind’s eye, my daydream pushing into a different place of processing, comprehension and production where I am now engaged and shaping it, writing, talking externally to another person about it. When put into another mode of communication such as writing, now out of daydreaming into my mind’s eye and now into the writing process, often it’s not the same picture. How could it be? Why would it be?

The shore of my mind’s eye to the shore of my written word is expansive and the translation process is not just the waterway between shores, it’s the air, it’s the shoreline, it’s distant hillsides and a horizon beyond…And that’s just translating my mind’s eye. Translating a specific moment in a daydream that is muffled words and sounds, much unprocessed, anachronistic, repetitive, real, fake, imagined, intoned, protective and sheltered, raw, Hollywood-styled impactful and desired, oof. And have I ever consciously done this kind of translation before?

Action?

So then do I write my speech now? Do I write it later? When is later? Am I supposed to spend my time on this? What do I want to accomplish? What will happen if I don’t write this speech? Most likely nothing, but for how long will the daydream be intentionally brought up by me if I don’t act? Is the speech I may or may not want to write simply a healthy me prompting some processing in real life? Get the emotions out, tell the emotions in a story of feelings and then don’t hit send? I don’t know.

And here I am, intentionally going back to a daydream that just, from what I can consciously tell, started one day, a few months ago. I didn’t set my mind to that scenario of me giving a speech at my stepfather’s funeral. I hadn’t been thinking about him dying at that time, but I have thought about it at times–he is old. Just one day…I found myself daydreaming. But, I certainly set the conditions where I could daydream this specific daydream once it came to me the first time. And I’ve been going back, in short periods revisiting and exploring. And then one day I was questioning and adding logistics and making notes of things to do to generate this speech into my lived reality.

I will write the speech. I will ask for permissions should the final speech require permission.

So maybe I am solving a problem or creating conclusivity for myself where I would like some to be. And at some point, I had to know, what the hell is daydreaming, and found this happy article, “Daydreaming and Concentration: What the Science Says,” in The MIT Press Reader by Professor Stefan Van der Stigchel.

* And not to be missed is Joshua Johnson’s piece about “ooohhh.” Distinct from my oooh shiiit set up, but very on point.