Dream a Little Dream of Me

My husband sometimes talks in his sleep when he's dreaming. Early this morning I was awakened by, "It was nice to see you." I was wondering who he was talking to and I started thinking about my mom. Then I fell back asleep and started dreaming that I was in a hospital room. It was a nice, big room with 3 beds in it and big windows all along the wall. It was sunny outside and made the whole room bright. My mom was laying in the middle bed and nobody else was in there. She was gone and we had already had her funeral a few days before.

We were going to be having some other service for her and I was supposed to get her dressed and ready. I left her laying in the bed on her back with her arms stretched out to her sides and went to her walk-in closet (who knew hospitals had those?) to find a dress. I was looking for a specific one with a really bright flowery pattern. I walked in the closet, which also had windows in it, and saw her temple clothes folded nicely on a shelf to my left and her temple dress hanging up, along with another temple dress. I don't know whose that was. I found the dress I was looking for and walked out of the closet and found my mother laying on her side with her hands under her head, cuddling her pillow like she would do when she fell asleep on the couch at home. I was confused for a minute and told myself, "Okay. Dead people don't just make themselves comfy." So I ran out into the hall to go find a doctor.

I kept running around telling people what happened and they all just kind of blew me off, because they knew everything that happened. I ran to an upper floor to find one of my mom's friends who worked at the hospital. She was sitting in a chair and had some candles lit and was trying to relax. I called her Bernice. The person I really think she was supposed to be was Toni, who does our X-rays at the dentist, even though she didn't look like Toni at all. This woman looked more like a younger and skinnier version of LaVerne on Scrubs, but the feeling I got from her was the same thing I feel when I'm around Tony. I told "Bernice" what happened and she got up and ran downstairs to my mom's room.

As I was running down the stairs, I turned around and saw that Jaron was standing just outside the room we were just in. He had his phone in his left hand and he looked at me and asked me what was going on. My first thought was that I didn't want to get his hopes up that our mom might still be alive and then have it not be true. I told him anyway. I said, "Mom turned herself over on her side!" and he got excited and started texting somebody.

Next, I was back in the room and I was sitting next to my mom's bed. She was still laying on her side and I started playing with her hair. She woke up a little bit and I asked her if she felt ok. She told me, "Yeah, my head hurts a little." She still had stitches in her head from the autopsy. Then her dad came into the room. He can't move very well but he wheeled his wheelchair up next to her and got up to give her a hug. He kind of fell over on her and I freaked out a little. "Grandpa, be careful! Don't hit her stomach." But he was happy to see her and she was happy to see him. He sat back down and showed her a baby boy he was holding. It was his baby, but at the same time the baby was him. Kind of like a clone, I guess. I took the baby and held him up so I could look at his face.

Then my dream backs up a tiny bit, I think. After my mom waking up and talking to her, it was still possible that she wasn't really alive. I remember being outside the hospital room again and walking in quietly. There was a doctor sitting in a chair to the left her bed (her left, our right because the bed was facing the door) and he was just watching her. I walked in the room and looked at the doctor as if to make sure it was really true. He looked at me and nodded and smiled. I had my mom back! I went back to the side of her bed and she started to wake up again. I talked to her for a little bit and started to tell her about her funeral. There were so many people there and all her friends. I told her Becky and Denise were there, even though some of them really weren't able to make it. I said, "And Trisha and Clint came, I mean Tricia and..." (Trisha and Clint are some of my friends. I meant to say Tricia and Dave, who are her friends). Before I finished my sentence I was holding that baby again and he was starting to get fussy. Then my grandpa showed up again with his wife, who was some woman I had never seen before, but kind of like Toni, I got the feeling she was really my Grandma Ester. She walked in the door and I saw she had a bottle with her and I was relieved to see that she was prepared.

The room started to fill with our friends and family. I didn't see any of them because I was just staring at my mom, but I could feel that the room was full of people. She just looked at me and the baby I was holding and she smiled and grabbed my hand and just held it while she fell back asleep. Her skin was so soft and her hands were still skinny and bony, but they were warm and I was so happy. I held her right hand in my left hand and had that baby in my other arm and I looked up and started crying. And then I told myself it was okay to go and I woke up.