THE SCAR

 “Waking or sleeping nightmares come to remind us that emotions, events, or traumas that we thought were long gone or buried are still available to us for healing.”

—Linda Yael Schiller, PTSDREAMS: Transform Your Nightmares from Trauma through Healing Dreamwork

 DREAM: The Jail and Bouncing "John" (March 25, 1989. Six months before my memory returned.)

I'm in jail. There are lots of people watching. I am on a mat in the middle of the floor. A tough female guard enters carrying a stick shaped like a baton made out of bamboo. We argue and she smacks me across the face with the baton.  

"If you don't behave, I'll do to you what I did to the boy," she says. I remembered another dream in which she had beaten him. 

 She makes me go to the "john." I leave the jail and enter a room. I am embarrassed because I don't want people to see me. I get on the toilet, and it bounces me up and down like a teeter totter."

 

 

Going up and down.                   Toilet                                    People are watching. 

 

This dream came to me six months before my memory returned, and while I was tent camping at San Antonio Lake, in California. I had no idea what it meant. After my memory returned, I looked in the mirror to see if I had a scar as the dream might indicate. A section in my book is about this scar and the turmoil it caused me. In case you didn't get it, the "john" is not a toilet, but a customer. 

 

 

DICK

He was a slight man in build, and short, but dapper. One side of his face sagged a little. I never asked why, but supposed it was from a stroke. He was in his 50’s and a member of the Merola Opera Program board of directors at San Francisco Opera where I was executive director from 1974 to 1988. His name was Dr. Richard Bartlett. I called him Dick.

Dick was an active member of the board. He was generous with his contributions to Merola. He said yes when asked to sponsor a singer. When we held a benefit, he always bought a $1,000 table. He worked at events too, passing out fliers, pouring wine, bringing food, and religiously attending board and committee meetings. I loved him. He was the ideal board member.

He started giving me expensive presents at Christmas. One year he gave me a beautiful platter from Gump’s. It is so nice I rarely use it. He also invited me to his beautiful Victorian house for cocktail parties and he treated me like I was special. I heard he was a good doctor too. He was kind and considerate. He listened to you.

One day his behavior began to change. He became absent minded. His mind wandered. His head seemed to be in the clouds and he even gave the impression of being drunk. He came to my office once in the middle of a working day and just sat at my desk talking about nothing in particular. His nurse, obviously upset, called and asked if he was with me. He had patients waiting. Once when he invited me to his house for a brunch party, ants were crawling all over the food. He didn’t seem to notice and did nothing to fix the problem. When he came to a benefit and seemed unsteady on his feet, I began to wonder if he had become an alcoholic.

 I fretted. Was something wrong?  Should I say something? Finally, I decided to call his girlfriend, and express my concerns.

 “Now that you mention it,” she said, “he has seemed rather strange lately, I’ll get back to you.”

 A few days later she called. “He has a brain tumor. He is being operated on today. He told me to tell you that you are a good diagnostician. “

 He died on the operating table. The tumor was too large.

I wrote to all of his friends and started an endowment. Money came pouring in and the gifts were used to sponsor singers in his name in perpetuity.

A year passed, when one day I received a call from the police. My apartment had been robbed. I went home to talk to the police. My television, tape deck, and jewelry had been taken. I felt violated. Back at the opera house a board meeting was in progress. My assistant, Suzanne Needles, had explained my absence and the board had taken up a collection to cover the expense of a new television. 

At the end of the meeting I learned there was a man in my office waiting to see me. He was a friend of Dr. Bartlett. "I am the executor of Dicks estate and I have a present for you from him.” He handed me a little box. The card said, “To Alice, belatedly.” It was a colorful pin of a jeweled Christmas tree.

I was overwhelmed. How is it possible that Dick’s gift arrived at this particular moment? Was he out there someplace looking after me?  I hope so.

 

Photograph of Golden Gate Bridge by Alice Cunningham

Onward and Upward