"So Long and Goodnight."

No, this isn't the end of the blog. It's a lyric from My Chemical Romance's song "Helena".

Let me back up.

Two nights ago I had an incredibly lucid dream. I was laying on a brand new Sleep Number bed, that I'd bought with some of the flood reimbursement. I could have sworn I was sleeping downstairs in my finished bedroom, not tossing and turning on a cheap air mattress on my office floor. I opened my eyes and the clock radio said 4:59AM. I heard raspy breathing - the kind I'd listened to for the last three hours of Sam's life. The sickly attempt to gulp oxygen into a body that is shutting down.

I knew it was her. I knew Sam was laying next to me in the bed. She was sick, but at least she was alive. I rolled over and saw her as she'd been the few days prior to her last - shaved head (hair partially grown back), sunken cheeks, huge dark circles under her eyes. But it was her! I tried to sit up, but my body was sluggish and unresponsive. I kept trying to yell out, "Sam, is it you? Sam, is it you?" but my vocal chords were paralyzed. I wanted to embrace her and just hold her living body once more. To feel as she felt the night of April 11th, not the morning of April 12th. When she was still warm and alive.

And as I clumsily moved in closer to hold her, her eyes snapped open with a look of abject terror and astonishment. It scared me awake immediately.

So imagine my surprise when I was flipping through the music channels this morning and caught the video for "Helena", in which mourners at a young woman's funeral are caught up in their own grief and don't notice her rise from the open casket and engage in a final celebratory dance before she falls back into the box and is carried away by the band, all pallbearers.

Now keep in mind, I'm not a big fan of MCR, or of emo in general. It's like goth went back in time and mated with the early guitar-based new wave from the late '70s and this was its unholy spawn. Also keep in mind that I had the dream before seeing the music video. But now I can't shake the image of Sam's astonished wide-eyed look, remarkably similar to this...











What's the worst thing I could say?
Things are better if I stay
So long and goodnight
So long not goodnight

This also came right after I'd heard that the new cultural center (at which the Pandemonium Players will be anchor tenants) will be dedicating the light booth to Sam. We thought it might just be her name on the back of a seat. But this is the whole booth. Lights and audio control, where she spent much time in her last eight years at various theaters around Seattle. A fitting honor for a dedicated thespian.

She would have loved the production of Sleeping Beauty we saw at the Seattle Children's Theater tonight. I'll link to a review over at Manic Lobster later... right now I'm exhausted and children must be awoken bright and early.

Life marches on.