…when someone tells me a dream … [I have made a rule] to say first of all to myself ‘I have no idea what this dream means’ then I can begin.   ~C.G. Jung  

A series of dreams over the past few nights.  Hopeful and filled with something like joy.  Waking up and holding onto the message, to the tone, to the hope.  Possibly it is just that I cannot stand the vacuum of joy any longer.  I am desperately seeking what I took for granted for a very long time.

In the dream, I was in bed with someone.  It was a man that I knew and was very fond of.  I knew that I was happy.  We were waking up.  It was nothing passionate or suggestive, but I was aware, very much aware the I should be thankful for someone to care about who felt the same way towards me.  It was not David and I knew that it could not be David.

Then we were walking on a busy street, a street of my childhood in Belleville, New Jersey.  We were on the main street and it was busy the way that a street in NYC, maybe the Village, is busy.  We were crossing the street and we held hands.  Again, I was very much aware of this gift of caring.  The man, who was tall and lean with short cut dark hair and facial hair, was not someone who I knew.  His name was Eric and although for a short time a long time ago, I dated someone by that name, this was not that guy at all.  We were crossing the street and in the middle of the street, he stopped and turned to look at me, his eyes wide and almost ready to cry.  I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he thought that he saw David on the other side of the street.  My heart started beating very quickly, with the idea of seeing David, with the idea that this man beside me was feeling like he might lose me.  I did not even look for David from that street because I knew that it was not him.  He was dead.

Then we were on the other side of the street and an old acquaintance, Hilly, was walking towards me.  He recognized me and hugged me hello.  Hilly, Hillel was his given name, was a good friend of Lenny, the husband of Marsha, a good friend from the early 80’s.  Hilly never became a friend of ours apart from Marsha and Lenny, but he was a kind, deep soul.  He is also someone that I have not thought of in years and years.  It is amazing what dreams will excavate.  

In the middle of his hug, Hilly pulled away from me and asked where David was.  His tone was accusatory.  It suggested that I was with some strange man when I should have been with David.  I felt a pain in my heart to tell him that David had died more than two years ago, and Eric moved from holding my hand to putting his arm around my shoulder in a protective way.  

And then I woke up.  The feeling of being cared for stayed with me all day and into the next.