Think what you will, but she paid me a visit and she had a message for me, which I am still trying to decipher. Well, honestly, I think she had several messages for me. I’ll start at the beginning.

My mother died a year ago of lung cancer. I stopped smoking for 23 years, but started again after my divorce. I have tried to quit off and on, but currently, I am smoking. Two other times she has visited me in my dreams that I can remember. In one, she was standing in my office pointing at the small leak in my ceiling, which I had repaired, telling me to get a new roof. I did.

As you know from reading my previous posts, my father sees her often around the home he shared with her for almost 60 years. My son saw his dead Grandfather standing in our hallway. My daughter sees entities, also. Suffice it to say, many people in my family can and do see dead people, even while they are awake. I do not. They come to me in my sleep, yet these dreams are like no others. These are so real, so very vivid, that when I awake I actually look around to see if that person is still there. I had a friend die at the age of 36, who came to me for months with messages for her devastated husband, which I relayed until I finally asked her to stop. She did.

Yesterday, during my nap, she came. My mother, my sister and some friends all checked in to the most beautiful hotel I had ever stayed. More grand than the Drake on Lake Shore Drive, more grand than the Pfister in Milwaukee, more grand even, than the Hotel Gritti Palace in Venice. There were marble floors and columns, ornate gold designs throughout, cream-colored walls and oriental carpets. It was opulent, a far cry from what I could possibly afford.

The bellboy accompanied us down lavish hallways to our room. My sister and I donned our swimming suits and left for the pool while my mother stayed behind. Gone but a few minutes, my sister and I argued. I immediately returned to the room and cried to my mother.

“She always does this! She is so condescending!”

“I know.”

“She is the most self-centered bitch I have ever met!”

“I know.”

“She pulls this shit every fucking time!”

“ I know. It will be okay,” my mother replies calmly, “It will be okay.”

My mother takes a drag off of her cigarette when there is a knock at the back door of our room, a door I didn’t notice before. I start down the long hall towards the door, bedrooms line the hall along the way. It opens to a busy street before I can get there and a young chambermaid walks in, handing me a blanket or jacket I left at the front desk. I am upset she didn’t use the front door and that our privacy has been exposed to the street.

I return to the pool joining my girlfriend and her two small children. I tell her about the conversation I had with my mother. She looks at me strangely, “But… your mother is dead.”

“No, she was there! She was in the room, I talked to her.” I suddenly realize my mistake and fall to my knees sobbing so hard I can hardly catch my breath.

We decide to leave the area and while walking around the edge of the pool, her youngest son falls into the deep end of the water. I jump in to save him. Her second son falls in. Now ,all the adults are in the pool trying to save the children. I grab the hand of the smallest child, trying to pull him up from the depths of the pool. I cannot. It is like he is stuck in cement. My sister shows up next to me and grabs his other hand. As if by magic, her touch brings the child up and out of the water.

I wake up. I am lying on my living room sofa, still sobbing and trying to catch my breath. I look around trying to see her, my mother, but I cannot.

I know she came to visit me yesterday afternoon, but crazy thing… she’s dead.