The Gift of a Dream

I don't believe that dreams happen just by accident.

Since my mother, Grace, died almost ten years ago, I've never had a dream about her, nor any sort of other "communication", as I actually have had with others who've passed on. Last evening Mom emerged very vividly in a dream, and I was taken completely by surprise.

In the dream she was with an unknown woman who appeared to be a caretaker. The scene took place on a short steep stairway of an obviously multi-level building. From the window in the background I could see that the sun was shining outside. 

Mom, wearing a bandana and a coat, was holding onto the stair railings and slowly, but rather gingerly, heading upstairs. Seeing her half-smiling face, I exclaimed: "Look at you!"

The scene shifted and Mom was sitting on a sofa of sorts, the bandana and coat removed. Then she smilingly said, not with any animosity but perhaps in a more feisty spirit, "I'm gonna sue this radical outfit!" I remember thinking in the dream, "That's my Mom!". 

Naturally I've been wondering about the dream's possible significance. I felt compelled to call and share the experience with my Aunt Joan, who took care of all of Mom's affairs during the last eight years of her life. They were inseparable as sisters and as friends. I told Joan that I thought that this might be Mom's way of letting us know that she's OK, that she's still her old "self". Joan was clearly delighted and reassured by the story; she has missed Mom terribly since she died in 2003. I told Joan that, perhaps, Mom was probably just disgruntled because something in the way heaven is being run isn't just the way she thinks it should be, and is determined to speak her mind!

A favorite psychiatrist of mine from the past once told me, "Harry, sometimes a dream is just a dream." But in this case, Jim, I'm going to believe that this dream really was a gift!