countessmouse | Weirdness and Nostalgia

For as long as I can remember, people I've been close to who have passed on come back to me in dreams. I know it sounds all kinds of weird, but it happens to my Mom and I've heard of other people having experienced this phenomenon as well. My ex-husband used to pooh-pooh it as a figment of my imagination, but Gunthar seems to understand -- or attempts to anyway. They are not always pleasant: until very recently, my deceased sister and I argued over her horrible life choices (which resulted in her death) each and every time she came to me, which left me angry and upset when I woke up.

My paternal grandmother, who has been dead for nearly 20 years, visited me the other night, gave me a hug, and told me something of importance. I remember only half of her observation, and it is driving me crazy because I think the other half of her message was of equal importance to the part I actually recall. Katheryn says I need to calm my mind and look back on the dream with my "peripheral vision", but that's been almost impossible this week because of work stress and oncoming PMS. It is frustrating and may be the cause of the vivid dreams I've been having all week.

This dream has also left me with a yearning to go back in time to one of the many summers I spent at my grandparents' home in the little west Louisiana town my Dad grew up in. Their place wasn't large, but the St. Augustine grass was thick and lush, the pecan trees impossibly tall, and the fig trees full of fruit that would eventually end up in jars of Grandma's wonderful fig preserves. Just one more time, I'd like to sit in the porch swing in my shorts and t-shirt, eating ice cream with my cousins while we listened to the sounds coming from the cicadas droning in the trees and the baseball field just half a block down the street. I don't even remember the heat of those summers, just the fun.

The house isn't there anymore. It was purchased and torn down by the Parish hospital in anticipation of an expansion that never came to be, and half the property is now part of a parking lot. But it's still there, in my memories. And if I close my eyes and try real hard, I can smell and hear the things that still give me comfort.