A Strange Occurrence

I've been composing this entry in my mind for several days now, and I just can't get it to sound the way that I want it to. Perhaps just plugging on with it is the only way to get it out; thus, here goes:

The day I started back to work after my dad's funeral, my co-worker Laura came to visit me with a card and a pretty potted rosemary. She's older than me, with grown children of her own. She's a good friend to me, but even more than that, has served as my de facto mentor for the past several years. I listen to her more than nearly everyone I work with. (Quite frankly, I have aped her work so often - and then had that work soundly praised - that I'm fairly convinced that SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING.)

So, Laura - a woman that I've followed slavishly for eight years, mind you - came to see me, at my workplace. She gave me a hug, and then said to me, "I want to tell you something that happened to me, after my own father died. He and I weren't that close, not really. But, do you know what?" (She then leaned in conspiratorially) "He came to visit me. In a dream, not right after he died, but a couple of months later."

She continued, "I have no memory of dreaming of my father, prior to this; ever. But, this dream was different. It was incredibly lucid, and we were talking, and sitting in my parents' house, about things that we needed to say to each other." (She teared up a little at this; this is my rock, now, and I've never, ever seen that from her before.)

As she left, she had regained her typical, gregarious composure. I half-expected her to partially laugh off her comment as she left, as this is a avowedly scientific woman - her bumper sticker says, "Militant Agnostic: I Don't Know and YOU DON'T EITHER" - who I've never seen utter a phrase without three journals full of empirical evidence to back her up. But, she didn't; she just said, "He'll come see you. Look for it."

So, about a week ago, the damn dog and cats woke me up about 5 AM, which is about an hour before I really have to get up. The dog was snuffling and licking, which makes The "Violently Sound-Sensitive To The Point Of Utter Insanity" Man insane, so I grabbed her and went with her into the living room. I debated whether to just go ahead and get up, or to pursue the insomniac's usually-futile struggle to catch a few more winks on the couch. Weakness overtook me, so I threw the dog outside, and to the couch I slunk.

Knowing I had to get up in a very short while, and half-listening for the dog to return to the door, I slipped into some sort of fugue state between sleep and awake. I don't know how to explain it. I definitely started dreaming, but I was also vaguely aware of the couch...do you know what I mean?

Anyway, I'm sure you can see where this thread is going. Suddenly, it was not like I was dreaming; it was, as though, I was literally, sitting in my parents' house, across the dinner table, from my father.

I saw the grain of the table, felt the knobs on the back of their wooden chairs, wondered why the hell they keep that big stack of catalogs in the kitchen. Everything was so, SO, incredibly, vivid, and clear, which is quality that almost never happens to me in my generally bizarre and nonsensical dreams (which often involve me kissing a random someone I know. I don't know why. But I digress.).

In this dream, my father said to me that he loved me, and that he was sorry that he wasn't a better father to me. I said to him that I loved him, too, and that I turned out just fine. He said that he was so glad that I had such a happy life, and I said that I was glad that he had given me an education and supported me all those years. He cried a little, and I cried a little. Then, his face went all swirly - I could still see the table, though - and it was over, and it was time to get up.

The next day, I called my mother to talk to her about something, I'm not sure what. Midway through the conversation, I paused, and said, half-jokingly: "I think Dad came to see me in my dream last night." She - the buyer of the purple plates, remember - stopped, and said, softly, "Tell me about it."

I did. She replied "Was it a lucid dream?" I said, "Yes." She said, matter-of-factly, "Well, that's what it was, then." She thanked me for telling her about it, and said, to end the conversation, "It WAS real, you know."

Now. I am a soulless heathen, my husband and children are soulless heathens, WE'RE PROUD to be soulless heathens. No argument.

But, honestly? Just for a moment there - a fraction of a moment - I think I saw a glimmer of what makes people believe in such things.

You know?