She dreamed of her grandfather who had died two years ago. He laid on his bed at the house on Crest Drive. He was very ill and close to death. She was worried about him and wanted to spend time with him. She leaned down next to the bed. "Melanie," her grandfather said, "let your light shine through."

While she slept she heard a loud noise. She woke up convinced the ceiling had fallen in one of the rooms. She got up and began turning on lights in the house looking for signs of destruction. After looking downstairs, she went upstairs and opened the door to the guest bedroom. The cats sat on the floor watching a bat fly round and round near the ceiling. She screamed and slammed the door to the room. She didn't know what to do--it was 3:00 am, after all--so she went back into the bedroom.

She must have fallen asleep because she began to have a dream that she was at a family reunion. She saw a man in a National Guard uniform with all kinds of ribbons on his chest. Her heart leapt because she thought it was her father, but when she got closer she saw that it was her uncle. She realized her dad was dead and she began to cry. She woke up crying in her bed. As she looked up towards the ceiling, she saw a bat circling above her. She jumped up and grabbed it with one hand. Before she could do anything, it bit her between her thumb and index finger. She squeezed its neck until the bats eyes bulged out. It was then that she realized she was still dreaming.

When she woke up the next morning, she let the cats out of the room where the bat had been. There was no sign of it anywhere. She grabbed her swimming suit to go to the gym. When she got out to the car, she noticed the driver's side door wasn't completely closed. As she looked inside, she realized that everything in the car had been opened and ransacked. The contents of the glove compartment were on the floor, cassette tapes and maps were everywhere, the ashtray was open, and even the door to the fuse box had been torn off. Someone had been in the car, but after a quick run down she could find nothing missing. She got in the driver's seat, put everything back in its place, and went to the pool.

Last night she packed for a weekend on the Jersey shore. As she rummaged through her bags, she came upon a piece of paper with a note she had written on the plane to Missouri a few weeks before:

“There’s a lot of fear with death. My heart is hurting. It has been since the call yesterday—that urgent message on my answering machine that told me something was wrong. My heart hurts like it is tight and small and cold in my chest. Hard like a rock, but painful.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. My shoulders held their tension fighting my intentions to try and relax. And then after napping fitfully for a half hour, my back got ice cold. At one point during the night I got confused. Dad dead or not dead? A dream? Reality? I got up to use the restroom and I heard a sound—a rhythmical swishing outside. I looked out and saw a blur of orange, a boy riding his bike around in circles in the street. It must have been 3:00 am. I went to get my glasses so I could see more clearly, but when I got back he was gone and the focus made me dizzy. I took the glasses off, returned them to their case, and went back to bed where Cleo and Kim were sleeping.

Dad had called me Friday night. I answered the phone and it was he. It surprised me. He never called. It was always Mom. It made me happy to hear from him. He was planning the trip out to see me the first week of July. We were going to fix the roof on the garage. I was going to make dinner for them—the virgin run of the mud oven—and show him the makeshift wine cellar I had installed. I thought he’d get a kick out of it—it showed how we were similar in the joy we both got from working hard, solving problems, and making things that were unusual, and yet different in our tastes and interests.

At the end of the conversation we said goodbye and I got in a quick, “I love you, Dad.” I’m glad I did.

I don’t like death, but I know it is always with us. I learned that with Kelly. No one is immune; we could all be brought down by the end of the day by some little misstep or by something larger, more inevitable. And we never know who or when. I try to remember it always. I try to hold people in my mind when I see them. I try to hold onto them because I know they might be gone next time I look. But sometimes I mess up—I forget, get rushed, get self-involved, or whatever. And other times I remember, but it’s just not enough.

It’s Midwest below me. There are fields for miles with farmhouses and very small towns scattered around. It’s on a grid system for as far as the eye can see. I guess the grids are roads. The grid is broken up by a patchwork quilt of fields in dark green, brown, and pale dirty yellow. Sometimes a diagonal road or river breaks the order. It’s beautiful really.”

The fog had begun to lift for her. She felt as though she had not really been a part of life for the past three weeks. Instead, it felt as though her memories were from watching a show on late-night T.V. She still had a hard time believing that any of it had really happened.