Dreaming of the Deceased

Week before last, I dreamed several times about my father, who died ten years ago. I seldom dream of my father, and these recent dreams were of his death; they weren't vivid dreams, yet I awakened feeling a bit melancholy, and I wondered why after all these years I would start dreaming about him now. A couple of days after these dreams started, I learned that my father's brother, the only son of my grandparents still living, was in the hospital. He was rushed there after his sugar level went low enough to place him in a near comatose state. Two weeks later, he has not recovered and is waiting to make his transition. In the meantime, I awakened a few days ago with one of my father's favorite songs on my mind, Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find."

Question is, why am I dreaming of my father now. Am I planting thoughts of him in my head because of his brother's condition? Did I sense that my uncle was in or headed to the hospital? Am I hypersensitive at this time, causing my heart, spirit, and head to work in concert? Or, rather, is my hypersensitivity allowing messages to get through to me?

Well, I have to say, I have not exactly felt any more sensitive than usual. My life is as busy as everyone else's living in the twenty-first century. Between motherly duties, wifely duties, and work, I hardly have a spare moment to think much less focus my heart. I haven't even been able to spare the time to travel the four hours to see my dying uncle. But my gut tells me that our family, so small now on earth, (they were not a very prolific group and our generations are about 27 years apart), is sort of rejoicing that another member, the last son, is making his transition. I feel like they're anxiously awaiting his return and are in a flurry of activity preparing a grand celebration. This would explain why my father, whom I seldom feel lighting upon my doorstep, seems to be doing so almost daily now.

Of course, this sounds completely off the wall to people not yet sold on the idea that we interact with the spirit world on a regular basis. I am a convert neither to John Edward nor to Sylvia Browne; instead, I have come around to this sort of thinking as a result of observing synchronicity. When I experience it, I refuse to ignore or deny it.

Like the day I learned that the oldest sibling of the family had passed. This was a year before my father's passing, and I had come in late that night, walked through my house and opened the front door. A cat ran in, straight across my feet like it had been waiting to get into his home. I shooed the cat back out the door and went about my business. Imagine how surprised I was the next day when speaking with my brother, who informed me that he too had had a cat experience the day before. These cannot be mere coincidences. Actually, they are coincidences, and the question for all of us is what we are to make of them.

I myself am intrigued by the very word: co-incidence. I can visualize time and space coming together auspiciously, and when they do, something electric or magical happens, something strange or out of the ordinary,even death. Isn't death magical? A soul leaves one time/space and enters the infinite, crossing a threshold in the process. What happens the moment a spirit crosses that threshold?

I'm not sure of the answer to this question; nor do I know what my uncle must be experiencing as he teeters between this world and the next. I had to write about this situation, however, because in the two weeks since he took ill I have been feeling a little out of sorts, which is not to say bad, but, well, sort of light footed as I awaken from these ongoing dreams. I feel a little pulled by the universe to spend time elsewhere even if only during the night.

Those of you who have been reading my blogs know that I spend a lot of time thinking about my paternal family. I am intrigued by them for many reasons including the fact that they have always seemed a little otherworldly, and not in the way that one may think, that is, religiously. No. Most of them were not religious in any traditional sense. In their otherworldliness, they seemed to accept that they were just visiting here for a short time. They lived fairly well, were well adjusted for the most part, but I always thought that they were measuring their earthly experience by a belief that the hereafter was going to be a better place. It was almost like they remembered being somewhere else, and most, if not all of them, were not anxious about returning.

So, they had various practices that sent the message to their offspring that this life was fleeting, and as enjoyable as it could be, earthly existence was really just one dimension. When I was very little, my father used to talk about all of the relatives who had passed away, his own aunts and uncles whom he missed. But he said that he had visions of seeing them again. Those talks with my father were long ago, and when he would anticipate his return to them, I could not imagine how quickly that time would actually come. Back then, his own imminent death seemed a long way off. Now, here it is 2009, ten years since he rejoined his loved ones.

As I struggle to describe the character of this family, I try to recall the various ways that they had, again, of suggesting an awareness of the multidimensionality of the universe. One obvious practice was my father's number-playing. I'm certain that probably a week before he died, he played the lottery for the last time. Was my father addicted to lottery playing? Well, addicted is probably too strong a term. I don't think that I or anyone else could have talked him into giving it up, however. He played at least every other day, and I suspect that over the course of forty or more years he probably played the same numbers. When I was a girl living at home, I was somewhat familiar with some of the numbers or at least their themes. Two most often-played numbers had to do with "dreaming of the dead" or "speaking to the dead." As I write those phrases I recall just how familiar they were in our home. Funny. My father never really spoke them himself though he certainly understood what they meant. No, he had a friend, his best friend actually, whom he'd known all of his life. His friend was at least ten years older. His friend was an even more avid number player than he; if I'm not mistaken his friend used to take numbers at one point. Anyway, this friend would call our house at least once a day, and whoever picked up the phone he would ask about their dreams. This was the oddest thing, especially since when I was a child I hardly ever remembered my dreams. So, I'd simply hand the phone to my father and let him answer the question. I might stand for a while eavesdropping, and always, the friend's inquiries were intended to arrive at a number to play.

Yet, my father's friend's interest in our dreams was not solely for the purpose of figuring what number to play. The inquiry was, in my opinion, a divining method, an alternative way to tell time, so to speak. There we were living in the twentieth-century in Detroit, Michigan. And, as was appropriate, my siblings and I had no sense at the time that there was much beyond this. Our feet were, you might say, firmly planted in that time and space, but, again, our elders--the very people who were raising us--thought differently. As I've suggested, they knew that twentieth-century Detroit was just one dimension, so what they were after, my father somewhat passively and his friend more actively, was how that other time and, let's say, Detroit time were aligning themselves. Moreover, they wanted to know how one was informing the other. Infinite time, in their perspective, provided a powerful signal, powerful messages.

So, in short, I am suggesting that they divined through number playing, yet I cannot say what they learned other than that the dreams, especially when they dreamed of the dead, allowed them to mark time. Every time they sensed that another relative was on his or her way out, they knew that their time too was drawing to a close. And they were not, as I've pointed out, unhappy or anxious about this basic truth.

What am I to make of this legacy? Well, I do not play the numbers nor consciously employ other divining methods, yet I accept the coming death of my uncle as a way of marking time for my own life. His last birthday he turned 80, and I am just a little more than half his age. As I watch him go, I know that my own generation is eldest now, and our time will be winding down. Something tells me that in the next forty years, I will be dreaming more (or at least remembering my dreams more), which is to say that I will be uniting more with a cloud of witnesses, who are awaiting my return. Until then, I am encouraged to slow down more so that I can tell when they ever so lightly penetrate this dimension. I suspect that from here on out, they will be guiding me more not just to hold my hand when my time comes but to point me in the right directions while still here.