Dream state

Yesterday morning, I woke up during my final dream of that sleep, and I got to live in it for what seemed like ages, as it always does. I was with Nigel and our cat Curzon, who died back in 2007 after a battle with cancer. The first thing I was aware of was that I felt happy and content, neither of which has been true, not like that, since Nigel died.

In that dream, Nigel and I were going to look at a place to live, which was, despite the presence of Curzon, a plausible thing for us to be doing. The setting was somewhere urban—Auckland? Chicago? Some other city?—and it was an apartment building of some sort, possibly lofts.

I can’t be sure what city it took place in (it wasn’t a character in the story), but wherever it was, Nigel and Curzon and I were staying overnight in the same building, it seemed, maybe as if part of it was a hotel. We were supposed to go view the place, but Curzon was trying to get away, so we divided duties: Nigel would go look at the place, I’d look after our cat.

The next segment was me trying to wrangle Curzon, though in real life he wasn’t that difficult to keep under control, except, maybe, when it was time to go to the vet for a checkup. Still, I managed it, more or less.

Then, it was back where we were staying. Nigel returned with a lady around my age or so who I somehow knew was the realtor. He introduced us, though I didn’t catch her name—sometimes details spoken to me in a dream are unintelligible.

The woman wanted our address, and I smiled slightly with a “here we go again!” thought in my head, because over the years Nigel and I looked at dozens and dozens of places to live, and here we were again, starting a new series. Nigel didn’t give her our address, he just smiled with the sweet/mischievous smile he often had. So, I gave her our address: The house where I now live.

The thing that’s interesting to me about that dream wasn’t how good I felt, because I’ve had other dreams over the past 45 months that made me feel similarly. In this dream, I recited the address where I now live alone with Leo (who wasn’t a character in this dream). As I left the dream and moved toward wakefulness, I thought about how dreams like that, along with my memories, let me return to my great happiness—being with Nigel—but I was also well aware and accepting of the fact that I don’t and can’t live there. Despite that, I was smiling as I told the realtor my address—though I noticed she didn’t write it down.

There are people who place a lot of importance on dreams, taking messages and meaning they see as contained within it. I’m not one of those people. For me, dreams usually feel like my mind is on holiday, having a good time. I’m absolutely not saying or implying that I think there can’t be more to dreams—in fact, there have been times that I’ve dreamed a solution to something I couldn’t figure out (like for a project, for example), but most of my dreams are more like movies I’m watching, sometimes epic, sometimes surreal, sometimes ordinary life. But I’m open to the possibility that dreams can be more than that, even if I haven’t personally experienced it, not really.

This time, the dream was probably sparked by what’s become a profound sadness: After 45 months without my soulmate, I sometimes feel the immediacy of my memories receding farther away, and as that happens, I may wonder if maybe I just imagined our two and a half decades together, like it was an elaborate computer simulation. Did we really have all those adventures? Did he really hold me? Was he really there every time I needed him the most? And every time that weird feeling of disconnection arrives, I cry, as if I’m losing him again and again, because in those moments, it feels like I am.

In that dream, though, I again got to feel the happiness and contentment I’d had for two and a half decades, while at the same time I also knew and matter-of-factly accepted that I didn’t live there. The dream reminded me that my memories, including what our love felt like, are things I can visit whenever I want to. They’re very real, and they’re not vanishing: They just live somewhere else.

That was a message I really needed, and it’s the meaning I take from the dream. But it was really nice to feel that familiar happiness and contentment again.