A Long Nap

The Wednesday morning radio announced the fire department’s hazardous materials team had been called out and there are local road closings because of a chlorine gas leak.

Since I’m working on a history book about the fire department this caught my interest so I went in at noon to watch the news on tv… I fell asleep in my chair and did not wake up till Ginny came in from work at 6:30!

Six hours of wonderful, glorious sleep!

See why I love doing historical research?

But if my history puts me to sleep now, what will it do to readers?

Anyhow, during my long nap I dreamed one of the sweetest dreams ever:

A young woman and I floated on air mattresses in the St. Johns River which was crystal clear as spring water. Vivid colors in the air mattresses reminded me of the striping of hot air balloons, sharp, bright green, blue, yellow, and reds.

The golden girl wore a tan bikini which matched her skin exactly and she was laughing and happy. Splashing and playing, frolicking in the sparkling water

She showed me that by laying on your stomach and paddling with your arms, you could make the air mattresses move, not only through the water but up into the air. We paddled faster and faster soaring above the river, swooping in and out among the girders of Jacksonville’s Main Street Bridge. We rose high above the city, looking down on the skyline, on sailboats in the blue river, on bathers lounging along the beach, on deer running through marsh grass, and on hawks circling far below us.

We saw a restaurant with diners on an outside deck and we drifted low, light as thistle down, lighted on the water’s surface, and paddled to a welcoming shore.

That was my dream.

I’m going to make an odd transition here from this beautiful dream in my long nap to a memory from real life which I also found beautiful but which many people might not be comfortable with:

When I was a young man for a time I worked nights as a security guard. The company usually assigned me to a different place each night. Sometimes I’d be on duty in an office building, or a warehouse, or at a sports event.

The worst assignment for me was the early shift at a bowling alley where the noise drove me nuts.

The best assignment for me was to guard the anatomy lab at one of America’s oldest medical schools. I’d spend from 11 p.m. till 7 a.m. alone in this huge room filled with marble slabs containing human bodies in various stages of dissection.

The vast room resembled the inside of a church emptied of pews and lined with dissection tables. Rust red brick walls, timbered ceilings, tall arched windows of mullioned glass, clear and rippling, only a few dim night lights here and there. Silent. Holy. A place of worship.

Apparently the same room was used for different classes because the naked gray bodies on the tables showed various stages of work. Here internal organs were exposed; there an arm’s muscles were separated into individual strands. In one section the students in an advanced class had opened skull tops and removed brains which lay in shallow pans. In another section, each corpse’s feet were laid bare to the bone.

In no case did I see any sign of disrespect to the dead people who were educating the future doctors.

All night long I’d wander (er, make that patrol) the aisles of this lab and marvel at how wonderfully and fearfully made the human body is put together. The aroma of formaldehyde (or whatever it was they used to preserve the bodies) rose like incense above the lab. It gave the preserved flesh a uniform gray color and a texture like Jello that’s been in the frig too long, rubbery, tough, yet pliable.

I’d look with fascination into the innards of these dead people and think about who they’d been in life and what they were contributing to the student physicians in death. Sometimes I’d pray for the deceased and for the student learning from him or her.

One of the most interesting sights in that ancient building was the receiving area vat. An arched doorway, a left-over from the horse and buggy days when the school was founded, led from the outside world into the receiving area where bodies were delivered to the lab. I would have thought they’d come in boxes or body bags or something, but all the bodies in that area were naked.

There was a huge galvanized metal tank the size of my living room and God only knows how deep, filled with formaldehyde or some preservative fluid. Dozens of naked bodies floated on the surface or lay sunk beneath the surface.

Here’s an incongruous sight, some wag had hung a life-preserver on the wall.

And in a corner stood one of those shepherd crook poles used by life-guards at a swimming pool to aid swimmers in trouble. I understand the young medical students used it to hook out the body of the person they are to work on.

What is it about the happy dream of me and the golden girl flying over my hometown and the gray reality of that anatomy lab memory that link the two in my mind?

Resurrection.

I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

The Lord God Almighty who created us and who fashioned our intricate parts in an astounding array and infused life into us, He himself came down to become one with us. He died the death for our sin to redeem us from the clinches of the enemy. Jesus Christ died as dead as any corpse in that vat. And He rose again from that death because He is the source of all life.

And because He lives, we too shall live.

At times, Jesus compared death to a time of sleeping.

And our resurrection to a time of waking.

“The hours is coming and now is,” said Jesus, “When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live… Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth…”

St. Paul gives another picture of this event:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words”.

Can you see why my mind links my nights as a security guard in that medical school with its vat of naked bodies 50 years ago and the soaring bright flight with the golden dream girl, my anima figure, during my long nap yesterday?

Death and glory; I see the connection.

It’s a happy one.

Oh, the chlorine gas leak was quickly brought under control with no injuries.

And by the way, for whatever it’s worth, Ginny and I are both signed up to be whole body organ donors. At my age and condition, I doubt if they can salvage any usable parts for transplant so there may be a vat in my future.

Watch it, Doc, I’m ticklish there.

But that's ok, I have a flight to catch.