The Three Phases of Sleep
When Your Mortality is At Stake
Apparently there are three phases of sleep.
These aren’t ordinary phases mind you. They’re not the ones you may already have — that is unless you’re on the wrong side of fate. They aren’t the ones your spouse likely has, or your best friend, or your nanny; not your dog, not your pet hamster, not your stepsister nor your coworker. They better not be, at least. Because these are phases of sleep that arrive when mortality is at stake.
I woke today, so it’s a good day. Or so goes the offhanded affirmation you might hear while hopping an Uber or grabbing coffee or chatting with a spiritually-minded friend. You might nod, you might knee-jerk something like, “ain’t that the truth,” but hardly mean anything by it because you’re too busy scrolling social media. Your brain rot likely dulling the significance of this particular colloquialism.
My friend Frank is sick. Real real sick. He’d felt tired for months, arriving home from his high powered exec job, exhausted as if crossing a triathlon off his bucket list; he’d crawl into bed by seven PM and, catatonic to world, he’d have to be shaken awake sometime late morning. Doctors offered a flippant “must be mono” and other statements that obfuscated the true crisis at hand. Turns out becoming disoriented on the subway, getting off at the wrong stop, and having to call home to ask the difference between an avenue and a street is a sign that a doctor’s recommendation to just take Advil isn’t going to do the trick. As a matter of fact, it is pretty obvious something is really fucking messed up.
After the subway delirium, Frank is hospitalized immediately. There are tests, and then rounds and rounds of chemicals pumped into his body. Half of them are there to absolutely destroy everything and anything; the other half, well, the other half leaves Frank on a perilous fringe, killing the things in the medicine that is trying to kill the things that want to kill him.
Frank is mostly reclined on a hospital cot. Tubes, wires, bleeps, clicks and clacks, charts, a disarray of medicine bottles — and a window for him to look through to get away from it all. He speaks of a mountain. Specifically of the enormous mountain that he is personally required to climb. Of clouds obfuscating the peak, and of not knowing if there will be a fork once he gets above them, one footpath clearly better than the other. He speaks of the steepness, and if he’ll eventually need to stop climbing upright, resorting to all fours, getting as close as possible to the ground, scurrying spastically like an insect navigating the thinness of the air.
There are long pauses, mostly filled by Frank’s wife who explains schedules and shares updates; words she’s likely repeated to countless visitors. Frank notes that his illness has magically transformed his relationships with others. Where there was typically a tremendous amount left unsaid — of love, of appreciation, of reflection — there was now a breaking of the surface. People telling Frank how much they love him, how much he means to them, how their lives are better for knowing him.
And then, there’s the three phases of sleep.
The first phase is leaving consciousness: it’s a sleep of nostalgia. The hospital is quieter in the late evening, visitors have departed, only the shuffle of doctors and nurses footsteps can be heard rustling in the hallway. Frank beckons sleep, in a meditative ritual that is designed to focus solely on positive memories from his past. Maybe a trip with his wife and kids, maybe laughter after a big meal, a snuggle with a pet; bigger moments like a graduation or a wedding or the shrill of a newborn and its first breath. And thus the cradle of sleep arrives, with as much thankfulness and appreciation as Frank can muster.
Today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present.
The second phase of sleep comes not long thereafter: it’s the sleep of terror. This sleep is shrouded in dark clouds, like pocket folds in the grim reaper’s gown. It is neither a conscious nor unconscious state; it is a hellscape, it is the whipping fear on an astral plane. This isn’t deep sleep; it’s not rejuvinating, it’s not restorative, it’s the brain working through the challenge it must overcome.
The sleep of terror is a toss and a turn, a sweating of sheets, moans and murmurings. It is darkness that shatters into thousands of black onyx crystals, each containing another fear, another pain the body, another sense of loss, of what of the future will be missed, of what should never be taken for granted, of families broken, of love that must endure. It is a coworker who offers, that’s too bad about Frank as they make small talk and sip their coffee before a meeting.
Another day above ground is a day to be grateful for.
The third phase of sleep arrives upon dawn’s breaking: it is the sleep of hope. Frank partially awakens to witness the sky paling; it reminds him that another day is arriving, that the sleep of terror is over. Another day looms, a day of horrific treatments and uncertainty and punishments that are the requirement to heal. This is a semi-conscious sleep that is able to appreciate the world as it is, that everything happens for a reasons; this is the sleep that reminds him to be thankful for another day with family, with friends, with making it through to this ordeal, to live on. This sleep reminds Frank that he is still here and that Frank knows he will survive.
Frank is crying now. Not sobbing, just tears welling, his eyelids drooping, in skin so thin they’re moderately translucent. Frank’s reflection on sleep hangs in the air, the depths of its meaning, of analogies drawn, of significance felt — of the purgatories of our existence more present than ever.
I break the surface and tell Frank I love him. That he’s impacted my life in more ways than I can count. I’d never said anything to him like that before. I offer it because I mean it, but also as another moment he can cling to during the sleep of nostalgia, or one he can take with him as dawn breaks for another day. I leave it there so we can share it decades later, long after Frank has climbed his mountain. Frank appears to be smiling now, his eyes are mostly closed, his breathing is labored. I am pretty sure he’s sleeping.
