Valhalla Can Wait

“Hey…. Pssst… Hey, are you awake?...”

It’s the voice of my friend Steve, cutting through the pre-dawn darkness. As kids, during any sleepover, I was usually the one, lying on the red fold-out seat, who could talk until the first shades of deep purple spread like a bruise across the sky, whereas Steve would be asleep and snoring like clockwork within a half hour lying down. Death, it seems, has reversed our roles and it is now my friend who possesses the sort of boundless late-night energy that he did not have in life.

“Hey… are you there?... Wake up.”

I mumble something along the lines of, “do you know what time it is?” but consciousness is seeping in, under my eyelids. Somewhere in the back of my brain an engine sputters a few times and finally kicks on to those two words.

Wake up.

Mmmuumph, hmm, what? I must have dozed off, my index finger still between the pages of a book I was reading. At some point during the night my wife must have turned off the lights and a small warm, furry creature, Tinker Bell, has relocated from being in the crook of my armpit to laying on her back with my left ankle as her pillow.

Some thirty years on from my childhood, it’s a lot harder to keep my eyes open. Sleep is no longer the enemy it was back then. It’s taken the form of a Valkyrie, ready to lift me gently from my body and carry me off to some version of paradise. The temptation to drift back off is so strong, all the more reason I have to ball my hands into fists, dig my fingernails into my palms and summon all my resolve. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, rise and stumble down the hall to my office, managing to bang my shins only a couple times before sitting back down in front of the computer, to stare at a blank page.

I consider anew just how easy it is to go back to sleep. Even as I start typing and working on an upcoming presentation, a big one, I know in some ways though I’m already sleep-walking again. That story of how grief became a catalyst and how I came to reawaken to the wonder of the world around me, after nearly three years has been refined and told so often that I could recite it in my sleep. Which means that I am probably doing just that - the story of waking up has itself become a sort of lullaby mantra, luring me back into a different version of the same trance I fought so hard to break free from.

I’ve made a start though. A good start. I’ve put three books on the shelf and I’m into a fourth. Wrote a ghost tour and working on others. But it’s neither the time nor the place to plant a flag, it’s just the first basecamp and the summit is a long way off in the distance. A start, even the very best of starts, is still just a start. Time now to stop starting and start in on the second act. The climb gets steeper from here, the oxygen gets thinner and there are fewer footsteps to follow.

The Valkyrie isn’t going anywhere. Over my shoulder, I can sense her disapproval of my efforts – she thinks I should just call it a night and be satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. And with what's left unfinished. She doesn't say any this, of course, she doesn't have to - she’s the strong, silent type. Though she is in virtually every way the inverse of my friend Steve, she is no less a member of my party; with me now for the duration of the journey.

Time to delve deeper, to push myself harder, to stay awake and stay focused. There are strange lands yet to traverse and wonders waiting to be revealed before I’m ready to cash in whatever cred I’ve earned as a seeker.

Valhalla, at least for now, is just going to have to wait.