I dreamt that my maternal grandmother died. The oddest thing about it is the fact that she has been dead for nearly two decades. I was incredibly distraught about the whole thing, while helping my mother with the ceremony set-up. It was at a horrid facility, well, horribly run… it was an outdoor place that seemingly mostly dealt with corporate feel-good to-dos, which seemed such an odd choice. The ceremony that had been just prior to ours had disgustingly bland left-over flowers, nothing was in bloom; nothing had been forced or ordered far enough in advance. I was getting angry about it all. (Does it make more sense thinking that I was a florist for eight years…?) In part, my frustration was coming from the lost of my history with my grtandmother’s death. Or so I thought. I remember an odd conversation with my mom during our set-up, about photos of my grandfather, who had died while my mom was a teen; about how I couldn’t even know him and with my grandmother’s death, I would have even less chance to do so….
Everyone was gathering. My oldest sister was there, but her expression was vacant. She wasn’t doing much. My aunt arrived. My mother had been there the entire time. My other sister was late; she was off finishing last minute arrangements, but her lesbian partner had arrived with their massive circle of friends.
And (oddly) someone from my Flickr contacts had shown up the night before. He lives in Toronto. We were upset that my family was getting all the bedrooms in my parents house and we realized that we would likely get stuck in the open living room. (I think we were dating…) At the ceremony location, he jumped in to scramble and fix the PA system. Logically, everything about the location was a mess. Then I got news that my (lesbian) sister’s assistant from work was handling the fight against the event locale’s management group. They had reneged on everything prior to the ceremony. All this and bunches of brand new, tight-budded flowers for my grandmother’s memorial ceremony.
See…? The flowers are important; my grandmother loves flowers. She had filled most of her trailer’s tiny side yard with massive garden roses, which always yielded ridiculously huge blooms for any family event (including all of our high school graduations) and offered the most incredible fragrances. I was incredibly upset about the entire flower situation. Then someone calmed me down, I thought it was the younger of my sisters… She said I should look at the flowers that had arrived to be laid at the make-shift altar. I did. They were popping open before my eyes. All sorts of brightly colors blossoms. I began carrying them to the altar site, which was just across a tiny stream from the gathering crowd. Bark (from Flickr) was skipping back and forth over the stream, dealing with the sound system.
Then I hear a series of odd sounds. I watched as a large cluster of poppies along the stream bank thrust upward and ruptured open into bloom. All the flowers along the stream bank did so. Surely, this was the work of my grandmother’s spirit. I shouted out to the gathered mourners to look. I shouted what was happening. My aunt (my mom’s only sibling) lit up. She become giddy about it. Every one was stunned.
There was this odd white board of sorts behind the make-shift altar, Some people were animating a text flow in-coming on a smart-phone, loaded with sentiments of folks that couldn’t attend. She was well-loved, my grandmother.
Then the dream shifts, and I look across to another knoll and see my middle-sister’s partner, on the phone. She calls out to me that James Grimes, a college friend of mine was on the phone to say he was running late. He had also been a work colleague of my grandmother…
The shifting continued. I remember thinking it odd that James was on his way… realizing that he wasn’t my grandmother’s co-worker; he was my sister’s… Then I even heard whispered through the assembled crowd that the deceased had been pregnant… with her fourth child.
I realized, as I started waking up out of the dream, that all along it had been my sister’s funeral we had been planning. (even though she only has two children to date…) I had been fooling myself, blinded to the truth of the service (or maybe the truth of the dream) until the very end. Everything started shifting and explaining itself at the realization.
Then I was awake. And managed to remember this all through the buzzing of my alarm.
I am calm for the most part, but mildly at ill-ease about the whole thing.
gryphon's hole 