It's bad when you dream about work; it's supposed to be your time off. And no one dreams to be a grave digger, so dreaming about that is only going to make people think you're off.
"What did you do today?"
"Another day, another dig," I'd say.
When I was young, I would just be happy letting my muscles grow hard and finish the day in a slow drunk. Sometimes I thought about women. But what could I say? I dig graves. Do you fancy one? It's no dream. Or at least, some dreams aren't made for public consumption.
I dreamt about a day like any other. Well, a day before I got old. It was a long time ago, back in the days when I went to the task by myself. No music, no conversation, just the birds. I'd get up early with the sun, and I'd be digging before the carriages started to pull in for the morning service. It was always wet, and my mother could never get my shirt completely clean.
I had stripped up the green carpet of the grass. It was raining in unrelenting, fat drops. I lay my shovel by my side and settled into the hole: hands around my knees, elbows touching the walls of my hole. It was dirty lonely in there. You can't remember the feel of a dream but I could feel everything.
Sky let loose on me, actually picked up it's pelting as I lay down. It's natural to want to die at the far end of a tunnel, away, alone. But why dig ours straight down when our whole life we're trying to get a little higher. To go for that house on the hill with the view, to make our horses strain up hills, to ring bells across our city from the top of a tower.
I don't fool often, don't get me wrong. Letting the mud get into my breeches, getting poetic when I have no right to be. It's not my idea of a lark. I'd be laying here eventually without the ability to get up. I could hear my heart in my ears. My skin cooled and became a mask on my face, my stubble trapping water. My nose took in the slow smell of dirt. I was a pulse down a hole.
I stood up, my head at grass level. Not much farther to strike. Heaved the shovel into the groove of my sore swing, I started to spread the dirt. I didn't think about it, I just started to put the dirt back in the hole. It was a good minute before I looked down, and saw my face looking back at me, peaceful. I spread it with dirt.
The perfect dream locked in my head that night, and I never shared it. My eyes were open, the glass of a marble. My skin sagged just a bit around my edges. I don't think I'm crazy. If you want to say it's just hole digging and close the case there, then fine. I just hold that dream in my mind and I'm happy. I'd like to go out that way, taking care of myself. As high as you climb, as deep as you fall, there's really that same view in the end: a crack opening to sky. As you can see, I'm a philosophical man. I'm a bachelor.