The Gospel Train

Clearly this is not right.

I glance down at my pierced hands and my powder blue, paper thin robe. I am surprised by the rhythmic thumping that keeps tempting me to simply lay my head back down to rest. I am mesmerized by the gentle swaying from left to right and right to left. This train is killing me softly with its peaceful promise of a restful sleep.

I am lulled by the darkness—-

Wait? Why is it dark?

It shouldn’t be dark. There should be a bright light ahead of me.

Was my daughter right? Has my anesthesia worn off. Am I trapped in my worst nightmare? Accidental Awareness. Damn it! I told her not to tell me about it. The horror. The inability to move or scream. The pain.

But I am not on an operating table. I am not attached to lines and feeds. Nothing hurts.

Absolutely nothing hurts.

I could live here forever. I can’t remember the last time I had a full night's sleep when I wasn’t abruptly awoken by sporadic pains and flairs.

I am on a train, rushing through absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. There are no lights shining through the train’s windows, just stillness. Peace. Quiet. The oddest part of this whole trip is that I am for the first time in decades content to simply be a passenger.

I immediately snuggle back into the soft down mattress on my Pullman bed—no vinyl covered pads on this train’s gurney. Just pure first rate Egyptian cotton sheets, crisp and clean. Cocooned so neatly that my feet, restrained by the straight and very precise bed corners, couldn’t guide me down a well worn path even if I needed rescuing.

Oddly enough my pillow, fluffier than any of the clouds I watched ramble across the sky on my endless childhood summer afternoons at the farm, smells like fresh grass, blue skies, and momma’s peach cobbler.

Ripples that propel me back to a moment forever lost. A memory of who I was. A reminder of who I had hoped to become. Funny how a smell or a touch can take you back to those simple moments of joy that stand as the foundation of who I became.

Who have I become? An invalid. A survivor. A desperate woman looking for pain relief in yet another spinal reconstruction.

A mother? Of two grown children who now live lives of their own. Happily conquering the world one decision at a time. Trying to live better than those before, while trying to correct the mistakes that echo in their bones.

A wife? To an amazing man that I was never deserving of, but that the universe knew I needed to survive this time around. The man that completes me. The man that I will spend the rest of eternity seeking over and over again.

A scholar? A poet? A teacher? So many lives lived and loved in such a minuscule speck of time.

A speck of primordial dust given the breath to love for a limited time before it’s time to move on to another space. Perhaps that's how I ended up on this train.

Perhaps the trains that wander through our gospels and our musicals are more than fictionalized myths or literary metaphors. Perhaps this iron horse, I find myself on now, isn’t limited to the east, the west, the north, or the south. Perhaps this train connects worlds, timelines, destinies. Perhaps it connects the hell on earth with the promise of the heavens. A true industrial revolution.

I once read somewhere that when one dreams about seeing oneself travelling by train, it means that one is moving in the right direction. Moreover, one is blessed with the knowledge of an ideal path that will take you to your final destination.

I have had dreams where my car is speeding through city streets and the brakes no longer work. I am left barreling through life trying not to kill innocent bystanders naive enough to cross my path. This is different. There is no fear, no fluttering heart beats. No dread of showing up to teach my class in my underwear, and no fear of the snakes slithering at my doorstep.

No, this is different. I am safely ensconced in the height of luxury. Luxury worthy of the Orient Express itself. My accommodations and time itself are now dictated by the iron beast in whose belly I now sleep.

I am traveling on a well-defined path, charted long before I was a gleam in my momma’s eye. I am safe. I can hand over my desire to drive down roads of my choosing. My path has been nailed in steel before me, and I simply must have faith that the destination to where I am now heading is where I am destined to be. I am content.

Content to rest and dream of tomorrows yet to come. Content to contemplate the people traveling through this darkness beside me. Happily wondering while wandering through the night.

I will rest now. I will regenerate.

Eventually the train will have to slow; eventually it will have to pull into a station. Eventually what has begun will end and what has ended will begin again. Eventually, when the dawn breaks through the darkness that now engulfs, I will have to reimagine life and love.

For now, I will cocoon myself in the darkness greedily inhaling the air of a perfect summer’s day. Tomorrow is another day. I will be reborn as a butterfly. I will have to unfurl my wings at the crossroads and contemplate which way I shall fly.

But until then, the sway will delay the ripple, and I will finally rest.