After ten years of writing about Patty I dreamed about her at long last.
In the first half of the dream two boys and I were in a makeshift theater. It looked like a bombed out movie house with gray, metal folding chairs and a line of attached upholstered seats in the very back. The boys and I are friends though I can’t tell you who they were. I knew where they sat: in the rear. They were goofing off, being loud, talking over the movie dialogue. I panicked. I tried to control the situation, waved my hands to focus the attention on me. “We’ll get thrown out,” I said.
Just then the man in the projector booth stopped the movie. Five minutes later it restarted at the beginning. Ushers tried to quiet the boys down. I was the one to call them over, to get back up. The boys flipped me off.
Cut to Patty and me standing face to face some fifty feet from the rear seats. I ask her: “Do you want to get kicked out?”
I remember being frustrated in the dream because I wanted to watch the movie. Patty was smiling a broad, mischievous smile. “Yes, I do,” she blurted. Her voice carried to the front of the theater.
I was flailing my arms in the air at this point, imploring her to stop.
That was the end of the dream. Something shifted in me the next morning. A little piece of the sadness about her I carry around sloughed off.
I am constantly reminded by my more upbeat friends that I have a lot to be grateful for. I know they are right. But they are much better at turning into the positive aspects of life. That morning I felt grateful for what can only be called a visitation. The closest I will ever come to experiencing my friend.
She was exactly how she was in real life: rebellious, feisty, loud.
I can only hope there will be yet a second dream.
