I took a nap this afternoon, and had a dream that didn't seem like a dream, because I was only half asleep. I often end up drifting a long time in that netherworld between sleep and wakefulness, and in that time my head seems to be a riot of half-dreams and images that come from who knows where. But in this dream, I dreamed that I had found a photo on my computer of A, a photo I had never seen before. And when I clicked on it, I realized it wasn't just a photo; it was a video. It seemed like he had taken a video of himself with his phone while waiting around in the eye doctor's office. (I know--its bizarrely specific, but that's dreams for you.) And I watched the video entranced, because I have no video of him. To see him alive and smiling and moving was so exciting, and I had received such a gift, to find this video after 6 years. I couldn't imagine where it came from, but I was so glad to have it.
When I woke up, I started trying to remember where I could find that video again, and then I became aware that it wasn't real; it'd been a dream. A couldn't have even taken such a video with his phone; the first iPhone didn't even come out until a year after he died, and those didn't have video capability. It's weird for me to think about how much has happened in 6 years, stuff he hasn't seen. He would've had an iPhone for sure. And then I thought about Skype, and how our long-distance chats would've benefited from that. I hadn't even heard of it when he died; we used Yahoo messenger, which had a video option (crappy by today's standards) and it was always freezing up and crashing.
What's also weird is how my mind created this video dream out of nothing. That's always fascinated me about dreams: how our minds can create things that we've never seen, or even imagined in our waking life. I think there is more to dreams than we probably realize.
Regardless, I haven't dreamed about A in such a very long time, and even though he wasn't "live" in this dream, it was, as always, so good to see him.
Mercifully, I've started having bizarre, mundane, odd, "normal" dreams about Charley instead of the usual he-didn't-die-but-he's-back-and-he-doesn't-want-us nightmare that was the norm for so many years. I still have a few of those every now and then, but they're finally much less common than the unremarkable ones. Sometimes when I wake up I try so hard to remember what they were, and I'm so close…but it's enough just to not wake up in a panicky, desperate fit.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you saw A again. =)
xoxo,
me