Dream a little dream…

I have prophetic dreams. Not very often – or at least I don’t remember them very often – until they come true.

The other night, I dreamed that the toilet got stopped up with, (pardon the visual) lots of, um, sewage. I’m glad I don’t dream smells. Sure enough, the next morning the toilet stopped up, and the dream came back to me. But the clever way I fixed it in the dream didn’t work at all in real life, and I had to resort to the old standard plunger.

Now, what’s the point of being a bit psychic if you can’t get helpful plumbing tips?

It seems like every time I remember and realize I’ve had one of Those Dreams, I first get excited because, Woot! I’m psychic! And then I’m disappointed because it was so ordinary – and frankly, useless.

I’m very glad I haven’t had a scary prophetic dream in a long time. They’re useless too, as I have found out. There is nothing I can do to change the outcome, and that’s truly scary.

The first one came when I was 25, sleeping next to my boyfriend on a warm summer morning. It still frightens me, all these years later.

A door is slightly open at the other end of a long, dark hallway, light glowing from the crack. I do not want to go there – I so, so do not want to go there – but I have no choice. An invisible force compels me toward the door.

I am afraid to see what’s on the other side. My sense of dread grows as I get closer, but I can’t stop moving forward. Now I am there. I shake my head in protest but the force insists, slowly pushing the door open.

The light hurts my eyes. I try to close them but I am not allowed to do so.

I don’t want to see this room.

The door opens wider, and I am propelled inside by invisible hands. Sunlight streams through a window where I can see a huge chestnut tree in a meadow blooming with wildflowers. Next to the window (I don’t want to look but my head is forced to turn), a large Native American woman lies in a bed, naked under a Navajo blanket.

I know instinctively, in the way that we know things in dreams, that this woman represents my mother. And she is dying.

But the horror doesn’t end there. Now, I am pushed forward again. I shake my head, “No! No!” but I have no choice – and there is no way I can write this without shuddering again – the invisible force pushes me down and makes me suckle like a baby at my dying mother’s breast.

I gasped awake in terror and revulsion, and sat up, sweating. My heart was pounding, my breath ragged.

“What’s wrong?” asked my boyfriend, still half-asleep.

“Nothing,” I lied, “nothing. Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

I lay back and stared at the ceiling. I knew instinctively that this was not a dream – it was a vision. And it was telling me that my mother would die too soon. Telling me, metaphorically, that I still needed her.

In spite of everything I did to try to stop it from coming true, I could not. Nine years later, in a room almost exactly like the one in the dream, with a sunlit, flower-filled view from the window next to her bed, under a Navajo blanket, my 64-year-old mother died, too soon. And I need her still.

That’s why I’d like to say to whoever gave me prophetic dreams: