Last leaves
I don’t usually write about my dreams, but last night I had one that was so vivid I feel the need to do so.
And no, it wasn’t about politics.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve either dreamed less or remembered fewer of my dreams. It’s disconcerting to me because I used to have such vivid, interesting, plentiful dreams. They were interesting to me, anyway, and often I used them for guidance.
Last night’s dream was vivid, too, which is much more unusual for me these days. It was very long and involved, and much of it I really don’t remember except as a vague impression of dealings with a bunch of people, a man, an apartment. Someone was getting married (not me!) and dressing up in her finery, then going off with some of the people for the wedding. In the meantime, other people had arrived (perhaps for a party)?
When I finally moseyed out into the living room—in a bathrobe, all bedraggled—I found that the people who had arrived included my mother. She’s been gone for over three years, and I’ve hardly ever dreamed about her, but there she was, along with a group of people I slowly realized were her friends and contemporaries. Since my mother was nearly 100 when she died, all of the people in that room were the adults I’d known when I was growing up, a tight community the members of which have died, one by one by one, until there is virtually not one of them left on this earth.
But there they sat, at a party in a strange apartment, and when I tried to speak to them they were in various states of dementia and illness. They didn’t look very good, either, although in the dream they were most definitely alive and not dead at all. But they answered strangely (if at all) when I asked them questions. They didn’t make sense. They looked off into the distance. My mother in particular appeared as she had in the last months of her life, when she was fading terribly, and not as she had even a couple of years before.
When I awoke it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that one of the strange and unexpected things about growing older is the disappearance of the generation above you, the ones who in your youth you took for granted would always be there. It’s a clean sweep. Although it happens gradually, by the time you’re my age they’re almost all gone or going very fast.
When I write that this was unexpected, that may sound odd, because after all it’s one of the surest things on earth that this will occur if you live long enough. But it’s something I never ever thought about in advance—or rather, if I did think about it, it was in a distant, abstract way. Now it’s much more up-close and personal, as my own generation starts being picked off with increasing rapidity—and not just the extreme outliers, either.
I had a great-grandfather who lived until well into his 90s. I never met him, because he died before I was born, but my mother used to say that in his final years he would repeatedly lament “I’m the last leaf on the tree.” He was referring, I believe, to this poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled “The Last Leaf” and written in the early 1830s (my great-grandfather was born around 1850):
I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.My grandmamma has said–
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago–
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
ADDENDUM:
Here is my great-grandfather, holding my mother on his knee. He is in his 60s here, and he lived for about thirty more years, looking not all that different. He was a handsome man.
While we’re at it, here is his brother, who died towards the end of WWI. I believe it may have been in the flu pandemic. He has the family “look,” particularly in the eyes, a look that is strangely similar on both sides of the family:
I often wake up and remember a fragment of a dream, but rarely to the detail you describe. That is a wonderful poem. Thanks for posting it.
I am at an age where the actuarial tables are not favorable as each year passes, but as long as I am healthy I hope to live until I hold a grandchild in my arms.
Oops, I meant to say a great grandchild.
Your great-grandfather neo had a kindly face but it was his brother who had the claim to handsomeness.
No leaf can truly claim to be the last, only the last to be harvested in that season.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace….”
parker,
Late starter here, I still await my first grandchild, which is probably a few years away yet.
Geoffrey Britain:
My great-grandfather was handsomer in his youth than in his sixties, but although he always a very good-looking (and dapper) man, you are correct that his brother was very handsome, at least I have always thought so.
I am told the brother (my great-great-uncle) had a tragic life in the romance department. Was in love with a woman of whom his family disapproved, and never married.
I’ve thought often, and written a few times, about that passing of the parents’ generation. I guess it really got going in the late ’90s, and was oddly disconcerting to me: they were part of the landscape, they were supposed to always be there. And now most of them are either dead or in fairly bad shape. The phrase “living memory” has become very poignant to me. Over the next ten to thirty years the 1950s and 1960s will pass beyond it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-uEjO9zfbc
Do dreams positivity/negativity extend to how you are in real life?
My wife’s dreams are rather negative. Usually I’m divorced from her or some other negative event. She usually wakes up sad from them.
I don’t dream much anymore that I’m older (almost 46) but when I do I remember wishing I was still asleep so I can stay there 🙂
Baklava:
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I do recall that with an old boyfriend of mine I often would dream he was mean to me or broke up with me, and the dreams were so vivid I’d wake up sad and testy. He kept saying (with some humor, I would add), “It was just a dream! I didn’t do it!!” which of course I already knew, but the mood was hard to shake off, because the dreams were so vivid and disturbing.
My great-great aunt was also tragic. She was from an Irish Catholic family and fell in love with a Jewish fellow. They would have been disowned by their respective families, but both died during the Great Flu Pandemic.
Who knows? Maybe he was your great-great uncle…
lee:
Where did she live?
Your uncle looks like a Victorian gentleman. He could pass for a westerner with that mustache.
Your grandfather has hair, and does look more hale than I remember from having seen the picture before, Neo.
Now as for the meaning of your dream.
Forget all the family imagery; that is just your waking mind obscuring the true thrust of your unconscious yearnings.
The fact is you are extremely sexually frustrated, would like to live like Madonna, and harbor an unconscious desire to marry either Woody Allen or Borat, or to see them marry each other.
It also looks as though you are soon going to experience mechanical trouble with your certified pre-owned 2013 BMW 528i.
That’s what you get for buying a used car, I say.
Hope this helps.
And remember you promised not to tell anyone about that recurring dream I have about showing up on the last day of a class I hardly attended only to find out it was finals.
Which … ahem, actually happened more than once. “What are you doing here? …. Ok …. If you somehow manage to get an “A” I’ll pass you with a “B”.
Thank Gaia for generous econ professors.
If I knew how to do it, I would post a photo of my great great grandfather who went to Texas from Kentucky to work on a cattle drive, ran a foul of the law in Oklahoma, and fled across OK, AR, and MO on a stolen horse, and a ferry back to KY. Colorful character that lived to be 89 and fathered 11 children of which 6 lived to adulthood; one being my great grandfather. My great grandfather was alive when I was a few years old, but my memory of him is restricted to photographs.
We live, work, prosper or not, and if we are fortunate we have grandchildren and great grandchildren to lavish with love. The beat goes on pulsing through our veins.
That’s a fascinating poem. It adds one more little element to my knowledge of Holmes. I find the rhyme structure rather interesting and unconventional; kind of reminds me of some of the structural twists that I used to strive for in my own poems.
“…For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14b KJV I completely did not understand that verse when I was little, but at 46 it makes perfect sense to me now……
Neo, what an exceptionally good looking family you have. (I’m sure that apple hides someone just as handsome.) I can relate to the poem personally. I’m from an unusual family in that the men either married late in life or had second marriages with children late. I’m the surviving child of a father who was 59 when I was born, and his father was almost 60 when he was born. That means that my grandfather, not great or gr. gr., was in the Civil War. Born in 1838 in Ohio, joined the Ohio Volunteers in 1863, wounded at Spotsylvania Courthouse May 15, 1864, died 1927 at 89. I often feel exactly like that hanging leaf.
awe..
Your Great Grampa must have been a very nice man. You Mom looks like she feels utterly safe on his knee.
The Other Chuck:
Thanks!
That’s impressive about the long generations in your family. My history is actually a little like that, but not as extreme. One of my grandfathers (on the paternal side) had a sibling who was born in 1839. I mentioned it here.
I love this post and how connected you are to your ancestors. I also have a deep knowledge of my mother’s line and it goes way back. I know particulars and intimate stories of people born in 1785, 1804, 1850 etc. I have letters written to my great great great grandmother in 1844. I have the camp chair taken to the Civil War by my great great great grandfather. Fascinating. I love your pictures. What a nice break from Trump and all the madness.
I will be 50 this July, but these sort of thoughts have been with me now the last few months very intensely, but on a more detached level than for you. This past October my last grandparent died at age 88, and the effect it had on his daughter, my mother, has been noticeable to me. She has basically lost that level of adults she grew up with, and she seems to have responded to it by reconnecting with her only sibling on a much more frequent basis than in the past. I am starting to realistically imagine my life with my own parents- something I never really considered before. It is disconcerting to say the least.
On dreaming, I also had incredibly vivid dreams when I was younger, but I noticed about age 30 or so that I seemed to dream less, or maybe just remembered them less. During a particularly stressful time in my life about a year and half ago, I suddenly was suffering from insomnia- something I never struggled with previously- and took a suggestion to start taking melatonin about an hour before going to bed. I don’t know if it was simple placebo effect or not, but it worked, but I almost immediately noticed an unexpected side-effect, incredibly vivid dreams of the sort I had when I was a much younger man.
That should have read “my life without my parents“.
It’s not just my parents generation that has passed. Many of my friends have passed. Two people I worked with passed last year and they were about the same age as I am. I am obviously in the check out line just waiting my turn.
My mom was an only child so we treated her aunts and uncles as if they were our own. I deeply regret not having interviewed them to get living histories. The youngest aunt died a year or two ago.
I find myself trying to imagine life without my parents. My wife has already lost hers. I think of it as being exposed in a way, standing on a cliff with no one between you and the edge…
I heard an interview with Warren Buffet a few weeks ago. The interviewer kept trying to get him to say what he didn’t like about his job, his business, what bothered him, etc, and Buffet just kept saying he’s ordered his life so he doesn’t have any unpleasantness in it. The only thing that bothers him (he’s 85) is that friends are passing away when you get to that age. So to us it’s still the older generation passing away, wait a few more years and it turns into us (I’m close to you in age I believe – 60).
My parents died a few years ago, and I am the oldest of my generation in the family. So, basically, if I don’t remember some long-ago event, nobody does. It’s a little disconcerting – I still say, “I’ll have to ask Mom about that”, but can’t.
Neo,
Whenever my spouse tells me I’ve been mean in a dream, I apologize. “That never should have happened,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I’m told it works wonders!
Ben David wrote:
What a beautiful way of putting it!