a crazy dream

I had the strangest dream this morning.

One of my closest friends is dead. I'm walking in my small hometown, passing by the meat store, whose owner once broke his knee hitting a truck when I was little (I remember because my mom described it as him "breaking the plate," and I didn't understand at first). An older lady is trying to buy a piece of meat that's hidden under piled white plastic boxes. I'm thinking about my friend, how I'm going to never see her again, how we should've done more we wanted to do together. Then suddenly my friend is standing on the street in front of me, and I wonder if I'm dreaming. She looks very happy, smiling, and she says, "Can't you see? I'm all around." And I get it, that she's all around.

The scene changes and I'm talking to her sisters (though I don't think she has two sisters in real life). The younger sister, with her hair so short it almost makes her look like a boy, mentions my friend's name. "I met her the other day," she says, and pain crosses her face because she knows she couldn't really "meet" her again, but somehow we all understand that she did and don't ask where or how. "She was smiling, and I was crying. She said to me, Don't cry because you can see small rainbows in the trees, right?" Her voice shakes and we all break into tears, seeing a number of small rainbows in the trees.

Then it's my room, it seems. The walls are blue, and I'm sitting at my desk, above which I put all the postcards and greeting cards from my friend. I'm looking at them, and my friend comes into the room. She laughs when she sees the wall and says, "Wow, it's all about me!"

I know she's dead the whole time, but somehow it's not as tragic as I feel it should be. There's a sharp sense of understanding that I will never see or touch her again, which makes me sad, but there's also such a strong sense of connection that I feel it's, somehow, okay.

Now I'm back at the street with the meat place, with my father. I'm telling him about how I feel about death, and he is very calm and understanding. He says it's sad that we try to cling to the dead. We go home. It's my parents' old apartment where I lived before I moved to the United States. It's a little dim.

I find my mother in her room, eating sweets that she's been hiding from my dad. She offers me some, but I say no and tell her to stop eating them. "You'll be sick," I'm getting annoyed, "Stop it." But she won't listen. She looks guilty because she knows she's doing something she's not supposed to; yet she keeps eating until she finishes the whole bag. She then gets sick and I try to take her to the kitchen sink so she can throw up. My mother clings to my neck so tightly it almost suffocates me.

On the way to the kitchen, the phone rings. I put it on speaker and stare down at it with my mom. A woman's deep voice repeats from the speaker, "No worries, Love. No worries, Love."

"I'm going to work," my father calls out from the hallway. I hear his footsteps going away.

At the sink, my mother starts throwing up, still holding onto my neck. The vomit spreads and splashes onto my face. I try to turn away but eventually accept it with sort of resignation. I'm remembering the voice we heard on the phone.

Yup. Crazy, but too vivid not to write down. I'm not really sure how to interpret it.