In Lieu of Flowers by Nancy Howard Cobb

Author:Nancy Howard Cobb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307426338
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Dreaming

In the days following a death, survivors become acutely attuned to the subtext of human behavior, developing a kind of laser vision and a newfound courage, which in some situations may lead to empathy, in others to impatience. Reentry into the world can be a jarring experience for those in mourning, and a short fuse is often the offshoot of prolonged suffering.

Shortly after my mother died, I attended a dinner party where a well-known television correspondent who had just returned from assignment in Paris was to be the guest of honor. When the newsman arrived, well past the point of de rigueur, he swaggered through the front door—one massive retriever in tow, one wife bringing up the rear—clad in grey flannels, navy blazer, pink shirt, and paisley pocket scarf, in a cloud of his own Gauloises smoke. He was short, with a large head.

As the evening progressed, he pontificated and postured, smoked between courses, snarled at his spouse and sweet-talked his canine, his slavering more lavish with each glass of bordeaux. This excessive attention proved tacit encouragement for his pooch—equipped with a bread-box-sized head, a table-clearing tail, and horrific halitosis—to probe each guest’s napkined lap as his master held court.

Like all tyrants—the loudmouth on the cell phone in your train car or the popcorn chomper who narrates each movie scene before it transpires—this fellow’s self-absorption bordered on assault.

Would you have the temerity to bring your dog to a dinner party, let alone ignore his table manners? Would you tolerate someone smoking up the dining room and monopolizing the conversation? Would you muzzle your own insubordination in order to accommodate his?

Although avoiding confrontation encourages this kind of behavior, most of us continue to err on the side of politesse. Whether it’s tyranny by entitlement, as in this fellow’s case, or simply tyranny by stupidity, we tolerate the intolerable far too often.

Except, curiously, during times of crisis, when circumstances force us to adopt a take-no-prisoners policy. When our emotional reserves are limited, we know instinctively what we will and will not abide and where and when to draw the line.

Although my truest response was stifled by propriety, I found a way to work out my frustration. When we stumble during our waking hours, the unconscious walks us through alternative solutions. These nocturnal revisions, at least for me, provide a certain satisfaction, a dream-induced retrospective spleen-venting—what I call REM Revenge.

My postdinner party dream was set in a narrow, multistoried, lopsided Victorian house askew in a fractured-fairy-tale kind of way. A raucous party was in progress on every floor. Guests were wedged together, cheek by jowl, standing in stair-wells, crouched under the piano, draped over banisters, clutching drinks, air-kissing and cackling, all over the din of Muzak and high-pitched nonstop conversation. Their gestures and laughter were wildly exaggerated. No one listened. Everyone talked. The scene was surreal and claustrophobic—Buñuel à la Brueghel—and I was desperate to get out. After trying several dead-end doors, I found one which led to an outdoor deck that backed up to a craggy, vertical peak many times higher than the house.

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