Some Glad Morning

We’ve lost a couple of friends in the past month. A good friend in California, earlier in December, and a kind woman, on New Year’s Eve.

It seems hard to have dark emotions at a time of year when we’re accustomed to feeling excited and happy. As those anniversaries come, year after year, facing them takes strength, a different understanding of the term “Missing Person.”

And this brings me, in a sort of convoluted way, to a conversation I had with a friend Thursday morning.

This friend is pretty good at dream interpretation. He doesn’t like to do it, though, because, as dreams are the way our brains work on problems and issues and knotty situations, the explanations can sometimes be sober and difficult. I haven’t asked for help with a dream in years, so I thought maybe I could get a response. He agreed, and I launched my story.

“I dreamed that Donald Trump had asked me to come and make a public service announcement. So, we all went: me and David and Kevin and April and Peter and Jeremy and Sarah … in our white station wagon. As we were driving down our street, we saw Sarah’s family, in their blue station wagon, and they had turned the corner and were going the wrong way, and we said, ‘This way! Follow us!’ When we arrived, the building was enormous, with huge rooms, and everything all gilded, the way you see in photos of Trump properties. The place was full of people, and Secret Service agents kept coming up to me with photographs and asking me to identify the people in the pictures, and were they were my friends. A bunch of preschoolers came by and I talked with them for a little while. Then, a church friend came and brought me a book, and we decided to go the to restroom, to see what the Trump restrooms looked like. They also were all golden and everything worked really well. Then we were in a banquet hall, all seated at tables, and a Secret Service man brought me a cardboard carton and put it in my lap. When I opened it up, I saw that it was full of toy plastic guns. And I said, ‘Ohhhhh. They want me to tell parents that children shouldn’t play with toy guns because they may find a real gun and not know that it’s dangerous and hurt themselves or other people.’ That was my dream. What do you think?”

And, an astonishing thing, I had remembered the dream. I don’t usually remember any of my dreams. And, I got up in the night for a restroom visit. When I went back to bed and fell asleep, I picked up the dream where I left off and it kept going.

The interpretation I got: “I don’t want you to feel anxious and worried, but this seems like you’re concerned about dying. There are streets and buildings made of gold and people that you know and love are there. And, it seems like, in heaven, you will be a teacher, like you are now. And the guns? I don’t know. You might be worried that people in your family are going to get shot. Maybe.” (Apparently, dream interpretation from a friend is not an exact science.)

“I’m not worried at all,” I said. I am pretty compromised, from a health standpoint. As far as I know, I’m not at death’s door just yet. But, I’m not really a candidate for becoming a centenarian.

It sounds like a wonderful eternity–a beautiful place, people I love, a nice banquet hall, little kids. And, if there are some folks there that I don’t care for so much, that will be Someone Else’s responsibility.

Here’s a link to the song lyrics for Some Glad Morning.