I had no money for the bus so I cycled the six miles uphill through the wind and sleet to get to the hospice. I was soaked and cold but once I got inside I began to warm up. I was welcomed by the director who showed me round and didn’t miss anything out. I saw residents drinking coffee and chatting on sofas, the art area, I met the chaplain and even saw the mortuary. Then she took me to meet the woman I would be working with on the video project.
‘This is Star. I’ll leave you to it.’
Star is a small woman with cropped peroxide blonde hair.
‘So you worked in the film biz. Which department?’
‘Camera crew, art department… You?’
‘Editor mostly.'
I’m sitting in SOLAS Cafe in Edinburgh circa 1992. I’m shaking as I haven’t had enough to eat and I didn’t sleep well the night before. I’m sitting on a brightly coloured sofa waiting for Star. I’m on the dole again and I’m at rock bottom. My confidence has crashed since I was fired from a job I didn’t even start. I needed out the house that’s why I went to the volunteer exchange and now I’m working with this oddly named woman.
She’s small and fast, straight through the door and getting us coffees and cake. I’m starving, dabbing at the crumbs on my plate when I finish the brownie.
We talk about making videos at the HIV/AIDS Hospice.
‘Some of them are very sick. Can you handle it?’
‘You mean like, dying?’
‘Yeah. We have to work fast. Some have young kids…that’s why we’re making the videos, so the kids will be able to get to know and remember their mum and dad.’
I don’t know what to say, I feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure why I have been sent to work in a hospice when I am grieving myself.
‘Another coffee?’
‘Yeah.’
She goes to get coffees and I am bathed in the sunlight that’s suddenly pouring through the window of the cafe, I can hear the traffic growling up Abbey Mount.
‘Got you another brownie.’
‘Cheers.’
Soon I’m going up to the hospice every week and I meet Star at the makeshift editing suite in a cupboard on a corridor.
‘Today we’re going to film Sunshine Mackenzie. He’s chosen a fairly trippy soundtrack by the way. Grab the camera batteries and tripod.’
I grab the kit and run behind her as we go off to find Sunshine. I shout after her,
‘I got the job, the one you gave me the reference for.’
She stops in her tracks and I nearly fall over her.
‘That’s great, when d’you start?’
Next week, but there’s just one problem.
‘Which is?’
‘They want me stop doing dream group. Conflict of interest. I can’t be a client there and work on reception!’
She looks pensive for a moment and then says,
‘I do dreamwork and I know someone who leads groups. Do you want me to ask her?’
‘Yeah, ask her.’
Today at the hospice, I’m holding a white plastic chair which Star stands on to film Sunshine Mackenzie from above.
‘I want to lie in the grass with all these wee daisies,’ he says.
‘Go for it.’
Later we look at the footage, it’s beautiful. Sunshine is smiling as he watches himself lying on the emerald green grass surrounded by a thousand daisies.
’That’s cool, like a music video!’
It’s winter and we’re in her car on the way to dream group. We’ve been going for months now, out into the country on freezing cold nights. I‘ve started to make friends with the shadowy world of grief I’ve inherited after a family suicide.
‘You got a dream,’ she asks.
‘More like a nightmare!’
‘Great,’ she says, ‘they’re the best.’
Dream group begins and I share the nightmare.
’I am terrified of pigs.’
‘Get on the floor and be a pig,’ says the dream worker.
‘What?’
‘Trust me, go with it’
I get down on the floor and I start being a pig. I pick things up with my snout and toss them into the air. I suddenly have this incredible strength and I get under a chair and start to throw it around.
The dream worker doesn’t miss a beat,
‘Star, get down on the floor and be the other pig,’
Star gets down on all fours too and we start snorting and pushing each other. There’s a lot of grunting and suddenly we fall about laughing. The charge in the nightmare has gone. We roll around on the floor in hysterics.
I feel good, alive and on the way home we celebrate. We stop off at the garage to buy Terry's Chocolate Orange Bars. We unwrap them and munch in the dark. She points up,
‘Look, our dream stars.’
We often see the same pair of stars low in the winter sky. There’s the rustle of chocolate wrappers, the sweetness of having faced our nightmares together and come out the other side. We begin to know each other deeply through our dreams. I learn how to be with myself in all my disguises and she becomes my dream friend.
I will be there many years later when she gets the phone call that she hasn’t got long to live. After all that training what do we do? What we do shortly after that terrible moment, is kind of stupid, we go and look at the videos in the Airbnb to see if there is anything good to watch. It’s a catastrophic diagnosis and she and I will struggle with it, just as the the folks we worked with all those years ago struggled…and triumphed. Now, I remember her when I see Castor and Pollux in the night sky and whisper,
‘You’re a star!’