Talks with Bob Chapter 8 | animal-voices-new

Part Two:

Life in the Afterlife

Chapter 8 Finding Ourselves

I wake in the wee hours from a dream in which I am an observer, watching a scene unfold:

Bob is hunting in a light mist when he hears something in the bushes, notices the movement of leaves. Sneaking closer, he sees a young boy emerge from the foliage. It is himself — Bobby, age five or six. His grown self beckons with a friendly gesture and his little boy self follows him back into the big white tent.

There are many Bobs in the tent: children, teenagers, young men, middle aged, all these many aspects and ages of Bob. Some recline on cots, some sit on chairs, others on the floor, talking and laughing. The tent seems larger now, with all the many selves.

They are thinking about hunting, and the young Bobby speaks aloud to the group. Why don’t we be animals? he asks. To see what it’s like to be hunted?

Some of the Bobs readily agree, and the 60-year-old Bob I know says, We could do that, but who would be the hunter? Young Bobby answers with a smile, We will be! Half of us will be animals and half will be hunters.

There’s general agreement that this could be interesting. Let’s try this, they say. And so they begin to choose their animals. The young Bob calls, Rabbit! Some of the selves call out their animals: Bear! Pheasant! Fox! Coyote! Wolf! Others hold up their fingers as if they are guns. And off they go — to hunt and be hunted.

The dream jumps forward — the hunt is over. It’s evening and I’m standing on a large hill just past the tent. All the selves are on the hill, some sitting, some reclining, a big, bright moon overhead. The grass is twinkling, little drops of golden moonlight glimmering like lazy fireflies settled on the grass, not moving, just calmly sparkling. And there’s such a feeling of peace.

~ ~ ~

What do you think of that dream? I ask in the morning.

He says that for me it may have seemed a dream, but to him it is real. He shows me all those selves still outside on the hill. We stand together under the flaps of the white tent, which is smaller once again.

Maybe this is a preview of my life review, he says. A way to see myself at different ages. Because each age has its own view of who I am. Maybe this is a way to meet and talk to all these different parts of Bob.

Is that how it is for each of those selves, I ask. Will they remember this in their unique timelines? Will it seem like a dream?

I’m not sure, he says thoughtfully, as if considering the possibility.

He references a self who is 30 years old. I count back 30 years and realize it is Alyeska’s birth year. What happened to the Bob whose daughter was born in March of that year, when we lived in northern Wisconsin?

I remember a dream Bob had when Alyeska was just a few months old, one he told me several times. In the dream, he gets out of bed and looks out the window at the lake because something is calling him. When I later asked what called, he said a tiny blue light was hovering above the water, that it was such a strange, intense blue that he thought it was a UFO. He wasn’t afraid, he said; he just watched it for awhile and then it zoomed away.

I ask if he thinks the tent event was connected to that dream. Maybe the blue light was a sign for his 30-year-old self, a marker linking him to this moment? Perhaps, in that timeline, the event was remembered only as a strange blue light? It’s an odd thought, but he nods in agreement.

Thinking it over, he says yes — maybe all these selves will have ‘markers’ in their lives, subtle memories of this meeting in the tent. Maybe they’ll recall it as a dream, or as an unusual event — a shift of light, a fleeting UFO, or a sudden thought from beyond. Something that pulls them out of themselves, just for a moment. Yes, maybe that’s how they will know.

We walk through the tent and look at all the Bob selves of different ages, now asleep on the hill. There are no longer lights on the grass, but a silver sheen all around them, a light blanketing of fine mist, gentle with the same sense of peace.

He says this event might not be remembered by the selves in their timelines, but still, maybe it links them to now — to their future, to this moment. He wonders if there is something that can explain this. But what, I ask.

He shrugs and smiles and says he is no longer hunting himself.

No, I say. Then what? What are you doing now?

Now I’m finding myself.

I love that, I say.

He tells me I am finding myself too. I am finding a new version of Dawn who no longer has a husband.

I have a spirit husband, I tell him.

Yes, okay, but you know what I mean.

And I do. I’m not happy about no longer having a physical husband, but I am finding my way back to myself too.

Read Chapter 13