Long weekend. I spent much of it working on my yard. I think the beds in front of my house look much better at least.

For the most part, it would have been a good if tiring weekend, but Monday evening, my Mom called me to inform me that her car was stolen. It was taken from their driveway overnight on Sunday. My dad noticed when he went out Monday morning. While it is a loss, I’m less concerned with the loss of the car than the loss of feeling secure about my family. It was an old car. It was paid for and insured, but they had been talking about getting a new one. But to think of someone skulking about in the driveway right beyond where they were sleeping… If someone would be so brazen, why not come on in the house? You have to realize, my parents live on a well lit city street, a block from the city hall and police station…

This isn’t the first time in my life… When I was in Junior High, our house was broken into (not the same place my parents live now). I was home and asleep when it happened. Nothing big was taken, but I lost that sense of security that people take for granted. It was years before the slightest noise didn’t stir me from my sleep. This event re-awakened those thoughts years later. And I just felt so helpless, so far away (150 miles give or take)… I wasn’t going home until Father’s day… now I think I’ll make that trip a little earlier…

Dreams of the Dead

I don’t know if the above stress contributed to this or not, but last night I dreamed of my grandmother, the one who passed away last year. I had not dreamed of her since her death – or at least not something that I remembered. It all seemed so real…

At the beginning of the dream, I was going to Granny’s old place to get a new cutting from her azalea. I got two cuttings before she died, one is at my home (and nearly dead) the other is thriving with my parents. I’ve been meaning to ask my Aunt for weeks about the possibility of getting one from the guy who lives there now (and I did e-mail her this morning when I woke up). At any rate, in my dream, I think I had gotten permission, but all I really know is that I was going there for that. When I got there, she was there. And I didn’t question it. It just seemed as it should be. I went in and we talked.

Everything in her house was just the way I remembered it when she was there. And keep in mind that Granny didn’t spend the last three or so years of her life there. She had lived with my Aunt & Uncle for a time and finally spent the last year in the nursing home. My cousin had lived there for a time before moving to Atlanta. So, I had long since gotten used to it not being Granny’s anymore. In fact, the last time I saw the place, it was just scattered bits of furniture, etc. But in my dream, it was all as it should have been…

I don’t remember a lot of what we talked about. I remember telling her about what I’d been up to. I guess I had a year to catch her up on. We talked about our plants and our yards. This was what we discussed most when she was alive.

Typically any time I visited, at some point we would go outside, and Granny would walk me around her home showing me the flowers and plants that she was most proud of this season. She would give me cuttings and seedlings to take back with me. We got up to go outside to look around. She said something about changing her shoes or something and I stepped on through the door. When I got to the bottom of the steps, I turned around to see her behind me… Behind me was a dark and empty place… not where I had just sat and talked with her. She was gone, again…

This was when I woke up… The alarm had been going off over 5 minutes. Time to have breakfast and get ready for work…

Simply a dream? I don’t know. I’ll entertain the possibility of it either being nothing more than my subconscious or something much more…

This is not without precedence in my life. My other grandmother passed away when I was almost 8 years old. Several years passed, about 4 or 5 actually, and I had a dream about her. Actually this one was stranger. I remember that I was actually in the process of another dream when it just abruptly stopped and my grandmother was there. The dream then transitioned to the town where my Mom grew up. I recognized it, although all of the cars and such seemed 1940’s vintage. I remember at some point realizing my grandmother’s sister (who was still alive) was walking with us, only she was much younger. My grandmother looked as I remembered her but healthy (she was in a wheelchair when I knew her). The Aunt never acknowledged that I was there. No one but my grandmother did. She talked to me, about what I’ll never remember. The only part I remember is her telling me that there was something she was telling me that was important to remember. When we got to the house where my Mom spent the first of her life, she told me it was time to go. I woke up and tried to write down what she told me, but it was gone that fast.

These aren’t routine things for me. I have only dreamed of her once since then. I don’t remember any of the details. I know I lived in Atlanta by that time, so she’d been dead close to if not beyond 20 years at that point.

And this was the first time that Granny appeared…