In my dream I was falling, peacefully, slowly, with none of the fear or the rush of a usual falling dream; this was slow, restful; I was surrounded on all sides by something that was helping me fall, something fit to my body like it was made for me, cradling me.
When I awoke it was dark, and I was afraid; the air felt too light to breathe, it felt substanceless; the mattress, too hard, like it was preventing me from drifting into the ground.
At work I was agitated, and I went home early.
Again I dreamt of the fall, the peaceful, bodiless fall, and it felt like I had finally surrendered to gravity, like I had given up a long and tiresome battle.
And again: wake, agitated, work, sleep.
A third night I dreamt; all around me the crystal blue, that strong yet gentle force that molded to my body; nothing had ever felt as accommodating, as supportive yet freeing, as the water.
And then I realized: I was not falling; I was drowning; the water surrounded me and suddenly I was overcome with that feeling that I had traveled too far from the surface; my lungs, my mouth, my insides all crying for air, but my body remained silent and still, acquiescent, amidst my inner screams.
It was then that I knew I was dying, and when I understood that, my insides quieted, and I lay at rest again, and I knew that drowning is peaceful, that water is gentle, that surrender is release.
I woke. It was light. Across the room my alarm beeped. Dazed I staggered over and silenced it, showered, ate, and arrived at work only a minute or two late, with nobody there to notice.
Work: Visitation Services Manager at the Historical Center, Marion, NY. I sat at the front desk alone. I was shaken; I felt vertigo, I felt sure the air was not strong enough to catch me if I fell.
This was disconcerting: as I sat alone at the front desk all morning, no visitors, no coworkers as it was a weekend, I returned to my dream in my mind, and it brought me peace; I felt as I did in the original dream, which was that I was no longer responsible; I could continue to lie in the water and dream.
It registered that I should be alarmed, but as the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock across from my desk, I began to question: why are we so afraid of death, of our own death, yet we never think twice about those that happened long ago? The death of everyone we know who’s passed, old celebrities, our ancestors: they’re dead, and they’re fine, somehow. Their lives are not besmirched by their deaths. When we talk about them we don’t fixate on the fact that they died. In a way, they still exist: death has not obliterated their identity.
I unearthed the master key from the desk drawer and made my way back into the archives, which were fodder for our next project. We were going to organize all the stories, documents, photographs, everything we had stored back here, into a narrative timeline of our town. It would start and end here at the Center but the timeline itself would take visitors on a walking path over the canal, through downtown, and back.
Ours is a small town, and my family had been here for generations; I had no trouble locating some documents with my family name on them. There were birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, estate sales, all the faded articles you’d expect in a place like this.
I’d never given much thought to my family’s history, save for knowing where we came from, which was here; I knew I was named for my maternal great-grandmother, Joanna, but this fact had always meant little to me, as neither my parents nor I had known her, and I hadn’t known my grandmother. Essentially, I realized, no one I knew had known my namesake.
Now, though, I wanted to know more. I needed proof that they were people, not just registered voters or property owners.
Six o’clock passed and I continued to dig through the archives. In some years’ files I found more municipal proof that my family existed before dying, some old slides and yearbook pages, but nothing to my satisfaction.
Around eight o’clock, I found a file in the corner marked, simply, ‘heritage.’ It appeared to be a catch-all for unfilable documents and other historical debris. At the back, bound together with a clip, was a scrapbook dated 1911-1931, completely intact, by Joanna L. Hoenigger, nee Salinger. My great-grandmother.
It was all there: the births of her five children; the death of one; four first Communions. Recipes, awards, someone’s poetry from the same school I went to. Two sons shipped out to Germany, one did not return. The father had dementia. Postcards and art projects. Lace clippings from baptismal garments and locks of hair and even a grocery list.
I read everything, feeling a sense of kinship with this family that had produced mine, and especially with Joanna. I had almost no connection with her; my grandparents had died when I was young, and my mother didn’t often talk about her past. Yet everything she did affected me, and here it all was, twenty years of memories carefully preserved in a book.
On the last page I found something that made me stop. In someone else’s handwriting at the top of a newspaper clipping was written September 1, 1943. The article read:
The body of a local seamstress was found drowned in Will’s Hallow Creek yesterday morning…Mrs. Dale Hoenigger, born Joanna Salinger of Marion, New York, aged 53. Authorities are investigating the possibility of foul play, although her body showed no sign of struggle.
There were no funeral papers.
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