A Dream is a Wish

I was commenting on someone else’s slice today, minding my own business (well, sort of) when a “related” post on the site caught my eye.

All I needed to see were the words “dreams” and “a wish” and “your heart” and my body and mind and soul filled in the rest, left me sitting stone cold at the desk, as I remembered:

Your golden hair hung lifeless as we sank to the floor. The phone hung back up on the wall. I rocked you in my lap as you lay limp. “It will be okay,” I whispered to you, pulling you close. Help is on its way, I told myself even as I began to sing to you:

“A dream is a wish your heart makes

when you’re fast asleep.

In dreams you will lose your heartache

Whatever you wish for, you keep.”

I don’t know how long we sat there before the dogs started barking. I don’t know how far I got into one of your favorite songs before I scooped you up and carried you down to the ambulance. I don’t know if I finished the last line before I locked up and packed up and loaded up to make the ride with you.

You had started the day with a fever. It was July, so of course, we were home together in the middle of the morning. Summer sickness is no fun, but you laid in my bed while I folded laundry. Until the fever took you, caught you in its grasp, and ran you too fast, too high, and too far. Your little body simply couldn’t keep up, not without shutting down.

Your body went stiff; your mouth shot so wide I won’t ever get that image out of my mind. Your little self shook, not in wild, big movements, but in quivers and quakes, like the earth was falling from beneath you, beneath me.

I set you on my hip, draped your head up on my shoulder, grabbed the phone from the wall, and dialed 911. They sent two patrols, an ambulance, and put Flight for Life on standby as I sank to the floor with you that day.

That song saved me then. This I know. Seeing it in someone else’s slice today took my breath away, took me back – in an instant – to the moment when I sat with you and sang our way through one of the nightmares of my life.