The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [29]
“I’m with you. I don’t think the dreamseller knows what he’s getting into,” I said.
It was a family wake, the only place where strangers are both unwelcome and have no desire to enter. But the irreverent Honeymouth, trying to maintain his poise, prodded me, saying, “Come on, Superego. Get over yourself. Let’s go to the wake.”
Just then I felt like slapping him. I don’t know whether he was humoring the dreamseller or truly following his heart. But since we were close to the wake, a place of respect, I contained my anger. The atmosphere was riddled with pain. There was a crowd mourning a man who had died of a rapidly growing cancer, leaving an only son, twelve years old.
The area where the dead were mourned was grand and ostentatious, decorated with several rounded, marble-covered arches and lit by chandeliers. It was a physically beautiful place to house so much sadness. Fear of causing a scene in a place where silence should reign made us slow our pace even more. We distanced ourselves from the dreamseller, remaining about fifty feet behind him. Looking back, he saw our apprehension and approached his timid disciples.
“What is the most clear-thinking place in the great madhouse of our society?” he asked. “The courts? Editorial rooms of large newspapers? The politician’s pulpit? The universities?”
“The bars,” Honeymouth tried to joke, then quickly apologized. “Just kidding, chief.”
The dreamseller answered:
“It’s here, at wakes. They are the most lucid places in society. Here we disarm ourselves, strip away our vanities, remove our makeup. Here we are who we are. If we can’t be ourselves here, then we are sicker than we can possibly imagine. For those closest to the deceased, a wake is a source of despair. For those a bit more removed, it’s a place to reflect. But for both, the truth is stark: We fall into the silence of our crypts not as doctors, intellectuals, politicians or celebrities, but as mere mortals.”
These words made me see that it was at wakes where we ceased to be gods and truly came in contact with our humanity, realizing our frailty and accepting our mortality. At wakes, we, the normal, engaged in an intuitive group therapy.
Some said, “Poor man, he died so young.” These were the ones who could empathize with the deceased and started to wonder whether they, themselves, could live a kinder life. Others said, “Life is full of risks. In the end, death comes to us all.” These saw the urgency of relaxing, slowing down their lives. Still others commented, “He worked so hard, and just as he was about to enjoy the fruits of his labors, he died.” These discovered that life passes like a shadow, that, in their search for riches, they neglected their own health. And they realized that they needed to change their unhealthy lifestyles.
People at wakes were trying desperately to buy dreams, to remember the reasons for being alive, but the system steamrolls them in a matter of hours or days. Everything returns to “normal.” They didn’t understand that dreams will last only if they’re woven with fine thread in the secret places of the mind. I had always tried to make myself immune to these feelings. To me, the misery of others was like a movie, nothing more than fiction trying to take root in my mind, but never finding fertile ground.
“Don’t expect to see flowers growing in a place where seeds haven’t died first,” the dreamseller said. “Don’t be worried. Let’s go.” And he smiled.
To him, these words were enough. To us, they merely took the edge off our hesitation. Death is worrisome, but so is life. The former extinguishes courage, but the latter can choke it out. What could the dreamseller offer in a setting where words fail? What could he say in a venue where all arguments fade away? What could he possibly say at a moment when people are disinclined to listen and taste only the bitterness of suffering in the face of their loss? What words would offer them relief—especially coming from a stranger?
We knew the dreamseller would not behave like just another mourner; that was a problem. We