Crossing the Water

I had a peculiar nightmare a few days ago.

***

I dreamed that about ten years older than I now am, I was called to be the prophet.  I felt a suffocating weight of responsibility.  I decided I needed to be healthy and vigorous throughout the term of the calling so I determined that in a year’s time and every year thereafter I would swim to the California shore from an island off the coast (in my dream, Catalina Island).  This resolution would make sure I kept up with exercise and health even in the middle of the day to day press of the job, and it would also mean that when I became absolutely too frail to do my duties, I would free up the office for someone else, by dieing.

I dreamed I did my first swim.  It was hard and desperate, but I made it.

Same thing the next year and for many more years.  It was never easy.

Finally I was getting well on in years, 80s or 90s, something like that, and feeble.  I had a feeling I might not make it this time.  I start out swimming.  There’s a boat trailing along with my wife and some Church people.  The water is cold and choppy.  Waves keep slapping me in the face.  I am so cold.  The sky is gray.  About half way through I can’t go further on, I start going under, the water is all around me filling my mouth, I can’t see, I can’t breathe, and a hand reaches down and grabs my arm.  I convulsively grab back.  They hoist me out of the water onto the boat.  We then proceed to the shore.  I am hunched over under a blanket and brooding.  I realize that my plan was stupid all along.  Of course if I were drowning someone would try to rescue me.  And in the extremity of drowning, of course I would take the help.

We are camped out along the California beach that night.  I sneak off and steal a rowboat.  I row across to the island.  It is very dark, no lights, no stars.  I slide into the black water and start shivering immediately.  I start to swim.  It hurts so bad, I am at my last strength almost immediately.  About 1/3 of the way across, I drown.  I can’t breathe, I can only barely twitch my limbs, I am sinking under, the water swirls around me, I am going under under under

..    and then I woke up gasping.

It gives me the shivers writing about it now.