My dog Jim explains a few facts of life to me in a dream

We were sitting in front of the fire at night in my cottage in the woods. Looking at the logs burning. Jim scratched his ear and yawned. His jaws made a crackling sound.

He said, “You know, when you melt down in love, you don’t take it back. You don’t run away from it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“When you and your wife were together, before she passed, you melted down. You can’t escape that fact.”

There was a storm outside. Or maybe it was my imagination. Or the world outside IS a storm.

I went into the kitchen and brought him back a dish of food. He ignored it.

“But there are things you have to do here in this life,” he said.

“That’s not breaking news to me,” I said. “Don’t be obvious.”

“In your mind,” he said, “there’s a statue in a park. You go there at night when you’re lying in bed sleeping. You stand there and look at it. You don’t know who the statue is. But you keep going back. It’s someone’s memory of someone he loved.”

“You’re starting to lose me,” I said.

“No I’m not. You’ll catch on. You’re asleep dreaming. I need to shake you up now and then. But you’ll keep coming back to the fact that you melted down.”

“I’m dreaming? I thought I was awake.”

“You’re in bed. The lights are out. You dozed off a few minutes ago. This whole section of the country was in the dark until a few weeks ago. Finally, the power came back on. They called it a national emergency. They brought in soldiers. They’re staging something. I don’t know what it is.”

“What whole section of the country?”