The Danger in Knowing

While laying there awaiting slumber to overcome us, I woke up and asked where we were.  Each of them, as we lay in the decaying structure, with tears in their voices, welcomed me back to them.   My father was laying on one side of me with my grandfather on the other, each reached over to touch me to reassure me that this was not a dream world. They said they had been waiting and praying for this to happen, the gods would not punish them by losing me. This was the real thing; I was there with only them, cold and shivering in a dank, empty hovel; high in the Bitterroot Mountains, far away from any form of civilization.  My mother was cuddled together with her mother on the wall’s bench, and she greeted me back into reality from there.  She told me that grandmother wasn’t feeling well and she could not leave the makeshift bench for fear of falling through the weak floorboards.  Grandfather took my hand in his and squeezed it hard and told me gently to lie still and when I woke up in the morning, his hand was still there.  And then mother warned the others that I was still too weak to fully grasp the situation and would need plenty of time to adjust and understand.  And with that brief amount of information, as I was falling back to sleep, I heard my mother, say, “Frederick, I hope this does not send Josie back to her coma, when she starts remembering on her own, she may not want to be here.”  What did she mean by that?  Why would I want to be anywhere else except here with my family?  Unless, she meant that I had to give up the rest of our family as they did, and my friends, home and surroundings.  Yes, that’s what she must have been talking about; we had left everyone behind and went our own direction.