Nightmares

I read that the Squirrel Hill terrorist wanted to "kill all Jews" even as he was wheeled into the ER at the hospital where the doctor and nurse who treated him were Jews.  In BadDreamLand, I had a vision of the murderer's wish being granted.  Suddenly his treating physician and attending nurse disappeared. Then all the Jewish doctors and nurses that treat and have treated me and my family through a long life disappeared.  Poof.  Then I recalled Itzhak Perlman on the Steven Colbert Show playing "Someone to Watch Over Me" and Itzhak disappeared as did the song's composer, Jacob Gershvin a/k/a George Gershwin,  and the beautiful song itself, along with Rhapsody in Blue and everything else that Jacob/George created to share with the world.  Poof.  Then I thought of Israel Beilin a/k/a Irving Berlin vanishing along with his gifts to the world God Bless America, White Christmas, and hundreds of others.  Gone.  Then I hallucinated Robert Allen Zimmerman a/k/a Bob Dylan disappearing with Blowing in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin', and so much more.  Then Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Billy Joel, Piano Man, My Life, Uptown Girl, Carole Joan Klein a/k/a Carole King,  So Far Away, It's Too Late, Tapestry,  Neil Diamond, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Sweet Caroline, Barbra Streisand, People, The Way We Were. All gone the disappeared Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler. Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Benny Goodman, Ziggy Elman, Herbie Mann, so many musicians, so much soul expanding music - gone. And all those humorists  who brought so much joy and laughter to my life - Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, the Marx brothers, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Larry David, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Benny, Mort Sahl,  Lenny Bruce, George Burns, and Al Franklin - so many humorists, so many smiles, chuckles, and belly laughs, taken away - poof.  And all those great scientists, like Abram Saperstein, a/k/a Albert Sabin who gave us oral polio vaccine, Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine, Paul Ehlich who developed the first cure for the worldwide scourge of syphilis and who helped cure diphtheria, Albert Einstein who showed us E=mc squared, relativity and black holes.  Then my frightening dream became even more nightmarish when I saw disappearing all the many Jews who have personally enriched my life with their friendship, those I worked with and those who share and have shared their homes and their hearts with me and my family, who have lovingly shared their wise counsel with me when I most needed it, who have shared their marriages, funerals, britot, b'nai and b'not mitzah, Shabbat services and seders and who have accepted me despite my faults and failings, my spiritual and emotional mishpuchah.  As my nightmare took all of them away from me I couldn't take it any more and woke up trembling and repeating don't go, don't go.  And though I'm not a pray-er, I found myself saying Please God - no, never.