WAS IT JUST A DREAM? PART 2

Well, I made it to my vacation destination. Turns out that their Internet service is down and I am having to sit at the local McDonald's (uggh). I am hoping that the techie people resolve this issue soon. So, Your Daily Dose might not be quite so daily until they get this worked out..

I know that you’re just dying to know the end of the Was It Just a Dream? Blog that I started a few days ago! I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I hope that you’re a bit curious…

You will get your answer the best that I know it today. In order to tell you that story, I have to at least reference several others. And they are all very interesting stand-alone stories on their own. None of them are mine. One of them I don’t understand. One of them I would love to tell, and I might try, but I know that I won’t be able to tell it as well as my cousin, because I wasn’t there. I won’t do the story justice. Actually, all of these stories are kind of a mystery to me. With that in mind, here we go…

In May of 2008, my grandma died. My mom’s mom. She had Alzheimer’s and been “gone” for a long time. Her body finally left in May of 2008.

My dad’s mom, nanny, had died about ten years earlier. Her death caused this ripple effect in my family on my father’s side. (This is the part of the story that I don’t understand.) There was something that happened between my dad and my aunt that caused them both to be equally angry at one another. After nanny passed, that was it. My dad pretty much wrote off his sister and all of her family. Period. He remained close to his half-brother (they shared the same father), but everyone else other than my brother and I, were written off. That was hard for me, because I was pretty much always living out-of-state, so whenever I got vacation time it was difficult fitting everyone in. I had my mom’s family in the Akron area, my dad and brother in the Columbus area, and my dad’s family in the Athens area. However, with my dad not seeing his Athens relatives anymore, that made it difficult on me.

I kept in touch (loosely) with one of my cousins via email and got the “big” news from Athens. For instance, back in 2000, her husband was diagnosed with cancer. It had spread to his lymph nodes. I remember that being one of the few times at church that when asked for prayer requests I had one. He went into remission and survived that. I remember thinking what a miracle that was. I didn’t know much about cancer, but I thought that when it was in your lymph nodes, it was bad. His cancer came back in 2007 with a vengeance. I remember getting frequent emails this time with updates. He also passed in May of 2008 after fighting a fierce battle with cancer.

So, in May 2008, I missed my cousin’s husband funeral, but I went to my grandma’s funeral. However, I hadn’t seen my cousin in a LONG time. However, we had been emailing, so I told her that my mom and I were going to be in Ohio, and we would like to come and see her. So, on our way home that is what we did. So, at this “reunion” is my cousin, her son (who is now in college, which blows my mind), my mom, and little old me. We are catching up on a ton of stuff. Of course, most of her stuff has been a tortuous roller-coaster ride that lasted a year regarding her husband’s cancer. She ended her story with what happened in the hospital the last week of his life. It is one of those stories that literally leaves you breathless. I promise that if I can’t get her to write it down, I will do my best with it. (This is the story that I don’t think I can do justice because it is THAT GOOD.)

Before we got to her house, I was totally jazzed to tell her about my dream, because I was curious to get her take on the whole thing. Well, after she told her hospital story of her husband’s last week before he died (which you still don’t know), my dream seemed very anti-climactic. I was actually kinda embarrassed to even pull my dream out. But, I had already built it up before she told her story so there was no going back. With far less enthusiasm than I had at the start, I repeated for her my dream, up to and including the picture falling off the wall. And then I waited to hear what she had to say about the whole thing. And this is what happened next….



(This is inspiration stump at Lily Dale and I got the picture here.)


Her: Have you ever heard of this place called Lily Dale, New York?

Me: No.

Her: It’s a psychic hot spot for feminine energy. Sedona , Arizona is the psychic hot spot for masculine energy.

Me: Oh.

Her: I have gone there several times. Their busy time is in the summer. Certified mediums gather there and they do readings to the crowds. They also have Reiki healings sessions twice a day. You can also pay to have a reading done if there is a specific medium you like and that is what you want.

Me: I see. I’ve had readings done by a psychic in St. Augustine. She was very good.

Her: The reason I am telling you this is because I had this reading done and the medium was right about everything except this one thing. I sat down and the medium says to me, “Someone is coming through and she wants me to tell you that the bitch is here! Does that mean anything to you?” I told her that would be my mother.

I laughed. That sounded exactly like my aunt.

Her: This was where it got weird. The medium then said, “Well, your mother says to tell you that everything is fine. She is with her brother.”

We look at each other.

Her: All I could think was that your dad had died and I was going to come home to find out that there was another funeral waiting for me. I get home and he is very much alive. I thought she got it wrong. And here you are with your dream to validate my reading. Maybe she got it exactly right.

Me: What do you think about the picture falling off the wall?

Her: That has nanny written all over it.

That night we pored through photo albums. I found several pictures of the same boy at different ages that looked like he could be the younger version of the man in my dreams. My cousin had no idea who was and there was no name, age, or anything else on any of the photos to identify him.

Was it just a dream or did I have a conversation with my nanny and meet an uncle I never knew (who is now dead) in said dream? I know that lots of people would lean toward the just a dream theory and forgotten about it a looong time ago. I might have done that, too, if not for a few things: 1) It felt so real (some dreams you know are your subconscious trying to work through your issues) 2) My picture falling off my dad’s wall 3) My dream being validated by my cousin’s reading and vice versa, and 4) Finding mysterious unlabeled photos in the family photo albums of this young boy through the years that look suspiciously like the man in my dreams (they are school pictures).

So, if this dream was real and true and my nanny had a son, who is now dead, and whose name I will likely never know, why was it so important that she tell me? I think it was because it wasn’t long after that she knew that I was going to be making a trip to Ohio. My dream was to validate my cousin’s reading. Her reading was to validate my dream. And the picture falling off the wall was my nanny telling my father to get a clue. Nanny always did shoot straight from the hip. She was never one to sweeten it up for you to make it go down any easier. She called a spade a spade. My dad was lucky that picture didn’t land on his head. So, there you have it… you can decide for yourself if it was just a dream.