To sleep, perchance ...

I’ve been spending an extraordinary amount of my “free” time in the hospital for the past several weeks. (“Free” time can also be read as “time when I should have been sleeping, or eating, or doing laundry”.) I’ve found also that if I’m not at work (or driving to and from work) and I’m not at the hospital (or driving to and from the hospital), I avoid ANYTHING medical-related – with one prominent exception.

I’ve always been a fan of M*A*S*H, and I own the movie and the entire television series on DVD. It was a show that I vividly remember watching with my mom (along with Barney Miller and, later, Night Court). We would always watch each M*A*S*H episode, rerun or not, and would look forward to hearing Alan Alda’s infectious laugh. He had … has … one of those laughs that, when we’d hear it as it burst out from his chest, it seemed spontaneous and hearing that joy and that unexpected reaction … well, it’d make us laugh, too. He also wrote and directed episodes as the series aged, and we’d know if we saw him listed as a writer that this may be more of a serious 30 minute period a laugh-out-loud one.

One episode in particular has stayed with me … it was in the 8th season, near the end and was titled “Dreams”. (A quick bit of research tells me that “Dreams” first aired on February 18th, 1980.) Basically after working several stretches over numerous days, each character in the show tries to take a catnap, only to be haunted by various nightmares and distributing images and then the REAL nightmare of where they are and what they’re doing intrudes and wakens them.

I usually remember my dreams, at least for the first few hours of my morning and then, most times, they drift off. Last night though, as I slept soundly in my own bed surrounded by my familiar touchstones and a warm, purring and VERY contented cat, I had a fabulous dream that was very, very real. There were colors and textures, sensations and distant noises that made me … well, if I could have been purring too I woulda been. I heard footsteps all around on the first floor, and doors closing while children went off to school … and then the familiar trod of feet coming up the stairs to the bedroom. I heard the soft shifting of covers being moved on the bed, and then felt a warm arm slip over my shoulder while a voice in my ear asked for a day of TLC.

I awoke with a start, sitting upright immediately in my bed, looking around to identify where I was.

It’s a strange thing to be disappointed by the simple act of just waking up. But the silence I woke to is so much more painful than anything I’ve heard thus far and it continues all throughout my day, making the hours damn near unbearable. No amount of noise I make covers it up, and the only way I can see for the silence to end isn’t in my hands.

So tell me again why sleep is so damned important.