goodbye dreams

Last night I went to a viewing for a woman who I had worked with at my summer job for 3 years, Mickey. It wasn't until my second summer that I really got onto her radar and unfortunately it wasn't in a good way. I wasn't the best employee, I'll admit it, and I gave her reason enough to get on my back more than once. Last year I was given the chance to make up for it and by the end of the summer Mickey and I were actually quite friendly and worked really well together. I proved to her that I wasn't a total waste of time and she trusted me with some pretty important events. We had come to a really great place. 

You can imagine my surprise and sadness when I found out that she had passed and last night was not an easy thing to go through. It was hard to realize that she wouldn't be around anymore and as I stood with my other co-workers we shared stories from our time with her and gave plenty of hugs.

This morning when I woke up it took a couple minutes but all of a sudden I remembered a dream I had last night, a very rare occurrence for me. I was at some kind of gathering and Mickey was there too. At one point we had moment to ourselves and we shared a very warm hug. She went on to tell me about how happy she had become over the last year or so and we walked back towards the gathering with an arm around each other. And that's all. It gave me such a feeling of comfort and relief.

Thinking back this isn't the first dream I've had like this. About 4 years ago I lost a dear friend in a car accident. It brings me to tears to this day. About a year ago I had a dream one night that we were together and shared a hug that felt so real and warm that I woke up thinking it had really happened. But instead of making me feel sad it gave me such joy to have that feeling again. I've missed being able to hug him so having the vivid of a dream about it was so wonderful.

I don't think these dreams make me some kind of medium or anything. I will say though that they happen to come along just at the right time and I can't help but feel like they are my chance to say goodbye to someone who I didn't get to in person. And that's pretty priceless.