Dreaming
I had a very strange and involved dream the other night. I was at upstairs at my paternal grandmother’s house, the house she lived in all my life, all my father’s life, until she passed away in 1997. I had found treasures upon treasures, small mementos of things I wanted to take home. I was amazed that they were even there, available to me. My grandmother and I weren’t close, so that added another level of strangeness to my being there, discovering treasures. But even in the dream, I was aware that it was a dream. I knew that the stuff didn’t exist, that I couldn’t really be in the house because it was sold to someone else 10 years ago, and that all the treasures I held in my hands would be gone as soon as I awoke. Even if I held tightly to them in the dream, I knew I couldn’t bring them with me from that place to my waking life.
The roots of the components of the dream are clear enough to me, and all A-related, I think, or rather, related to his passing. But I wonder if there is further metaphor to be decoded from the dream. I wonder if I’m supposed to take from it that everything I cannot have because it is gone from my waking life is still there in another place, and the dream was a visit to give me encouragement: While I can’t have everything I want in my waking life, I will take with me the memory, the awareness of something more to get me through when the times get hard. It was so vivid, in all 5 senses and emotionally, I’m obviously meant to remember it. I don’t remember most of my dreams, even when I know I had them.
I don’t know. There are more things I don’t know than I do know. But I guess if I can find any comfort in a dream about loss, or the inability to hold on to what I treasure, I think I’ll take it. Comfort is a scarce enough commodity these days.