Speaking of Tomb Stones

My dad emailed this to me this morning. It's my grandparents tombstone (obviously:P) and oddly enough, it made me smile. Now, this might be a normal, run-of-the-mill tombstone, I have no idea, but it suits my grandparents perfectly.

You'd have to be totally unaware of Christianity and its symbols not to figure out that they were Christian, their tombstone, like their house, is covered in it. I love the crosses in stain glass on the sides with the ivy branches covering them, You are the Vine, we are the branches. Their names and dates, my grandfathers not yet completed, are both written in the Book of Life, something I know my grandparents don't have to wonder about.

What made me smile the most was the heart pierced by a cross in the center. My grandfather is a carpenter and he has made his children and grandchildren chairs, and I'm sure a half the people he knows, shelves, cradles, puzzles, you name it, if it's wood, he's made it, on the back or bottom of each and every one in black sharpie marker is the year it was made and and a heart pierced by a cross. I'd call it a family coat of arms but it isn't. Grandpa taught my brother, Phillip how to make pool ball holder once. He wouldn't let Phillip use the heart pierced by the cross, he said that Phillip needed to make his own mark, something that showed what he was. I'm pleased to say that Phillips is an Icthus next to a cross, and I don't think he picked a Christian symbol just because of my grandfather, that is truly Phillip.

And at the bottom, 'Parents of Wesley, Wilson, Walter, Warren.' No question, they poured themselves in to my father and uncles. No one could even begin to assert that they weren't completely devoted to their family, both their children and each other.

Yes, in the assessment of their granddaughter, this tombstone is a perfect representation of my grandparents and I am proud of them and proud to be their grandchild.

I had a good dream last night. In the middle of a bad dream, but I had a good dream none the less. In the midst of basketball teams mourning their murdered team mates and some guy who was stocking me rather overtly but I couldn't find my husband and unfinished business with high-school friends, there was a little bit of... I don't know... resolution.

It was a dream within a dream, because I was in a library in the first dream and I fell asleep while working on my homework. It was linear, which means that I was paying attention to one thing as it unfolded and I was completely unaware of any other story or plot in my other dreams while in this dream. I could hear and sense the memory of music and incense when I first woke up and, and I'm glad I remembered then because I only remember the memory of remembering now. It was sweet and clear. Unlike anything else. There was also only one person other than myself in the dream but I never saw her, I could only hear her voice and see what she wrote, although I still have the vague sense that her actual body was there, I just am not able to remember it. Besides, I was much more captured by what she was writing than what she looked like. She wrote a story, all of which I can't remember, and especially not exactly what she wrote, but it's a story I know well.

My salvation.

She started at the beginning, before the beginning, with the parts we don't know. While reading aloud as she wrote, or did she sing, or was it the same thing. She wrote it all in short understandable sentences. Everything. The what, the why, the how. Every step, every reason. From Adam to Noah to Abraham to Jacob and Issac. To David and, in the end, to Jesus. But she wasn't writing the human side. She was writing God's side. For a brief moment in my whole life, the entire reason for everything there is and everything there will be was written before me in black ink that seeped into the parchment.

But the part that made me remember, the part that made me actually get up to write it down, was the part that I carried with me back into my other dreams, the part she wrote at the end. In regards to my salvation: AFFIRMED. COMPLETED. RESOLVED. SEALED. IT IS FINISHED.

It was not until I woke up that I realized what she had written and in what form it was written in. She wrote it as a law case brief, of which I have had to read quite a few this quarter. They consist of the transgression, the defendant and plaintiffs arguments, the law, the explanation of how the law applies, and a simple statement, usually no more than a word, as to the decision of the court. Usually: affirmed or remanded (if the judgment is overturned from a low court decision). Affirmed. She actually continued writing synonymous words until I awoke from that dream back into my first dream in the library. Affirmed, from the highest court, no chance of remanding. It is finished.

Back in my first dream I looked at a friend and asked her if she ever wished she could read a book in a dream because it might say something other than just the words it shows while we're awake. She gave me a very Kati-ish 'you're out of your mind' look. Which I suppose was appropriate given what I had just said.

But then I realized that everything that had been written, every last word, was written on my forehead. It was written over the top of it's self so the only thing you could read at first glance was the verdict, how the whole verdict fit onto my forehead at the same time baffles me because she wrote a lot, but it did. For anyone with eyes to see. Which apparently wasn't anyone except some guy whom I assume was a demon in human disguise, but that's another story.

This is my story. And I am affirmed.

It is finished.