Dreaming Of Grandma

I dreamt of my Grandma last night. Actually, it was this morning in the 8 minutes between when Lone Star Pa hit the snooze button and when it went off (I heard it is bad if you can fall into REM sleep immediately: oh, well). In my dream, we were in my Grandma's house (I miss that house), but, in the way of dreams, it was nothing like her actual house. My mother, my uncle, my aunt (my uncle's ex-wife), my Grandma and my Grandma's mother were there, and myself. My Grandma's mother actually died many years before I was born, I think maybe when my mother was just a young child and my Grandma died almost 11 years ago and my uncle and aunt divorced many years ago, but somehow, in the dream, it all made sense that we were there. My Grandma and her mother were sitting in two chairs that were the obvious heart of the room. My Grandma's mother was dying and everyone was talking about it and making plans for her funeral, which did not seem tacky in the dream somehow. Every so often, my Grandma and her mother would drop out of the conversation to say a Decade of the Rosary together. The rest of us would just keep talking. I was not actually talking much. I felt sort of left out of the conversation, treated as a child, vaguely disapproving of their plans. I was definitely an adult in the dream which was a little odd since, even though I was 23 when my Grandma died, I was just a young adolescent when her Alzheimer's got very bad and she never really knew me as an adult. I woke up. I don't know what it means, what my Grandma was trying to tell me, if anything...

It is odd to me that I do not dream more of my Grandma, or remember the dreams at any rate. The last dream I remember having of her before this one was over six years ago when we were house-hunting. In real life, I was getting frustrated, and the dream mirrored that, but brought a faerie tale ending when I realized that my family had not ever sold my Grandma's house, the house that was more home to me in early childhood than any other place, and that my family could move into it and stop house-hunting. Of course, they really did sell the house and it is very different now when I drive by it, aching with nostalgia and wondering if the fig tree is still in the backyard. It is really strange...I often dream of whatever thoughts I am processing during the day and my Grandma is a daily presence in my thoughts and emotions...a soft ache of missing her and a strength of having been cared for... one would think I would dream of her often. I think the dreams I have from her are special, though - message dreams, if I could just crack the code. I am always a bit wonderstruck at how we still seem to reach for each other...I never really knew her as a person, only in the egomaniacal way a child knows a parent, as a home, and she never knew me as an adult, only as a child to give a home to...but we keep reaching for each other...across death and memory. I do not think her importance in my life will ever diminish, in each step and thought.