Within my dream, I woke with the dawn. Curled up on a chair all comfy and warm, beside an east facing window. The sun was rising, coloring the windowpanes all gold. Or was it the yellowing paper against it that gilded this moment? All the world was still sleeping. I began to peel away the paper to find it was photographs I never remembered seeing before. Photos taken on days never remembered, of people who I loved that had long vanished from my life. To have these moments back, to hold their faces in my hands, moments I had forgotten, photos that had never been taken, I was filled with so many emotions. Who took these pictures, who covered the window with them to block out the light? I wanted to say to someone "Look, look at what I found!". The long lost and forgotten. But there was no one there... and then I became aware of the room and that I was not alone. He had been sleeping, laying quiet and so still just beyond my reach and was now waking. He put on those work boots, the Timberlands I had watched him lace so many times before. Getting ready for work, getting ready to leave. He would have walked out the door without a word, without hesitation into the morning light pouring through the doorway but I caught his hand in mine and would not let go. I asked him to wait for me. He asked how long would it be till I was ready for this. Some magic mythical half hour that may come someday, that I am still waiting for to pass because he said he would come back for me and then gently slipped from my grasp.

And then I truly awoke from this dreaming, still feeling his fingers in mine, still breathing in his scent. I am waiting, he will come back for me. I know now who it will be that takes my soul from this veiled existence into the light.

I dream of him often, I wonder if we are actually allowed to meet in that in-between place, the world of sleep and the world of death. Perhaps Heaven allows this as a comfort and a sort of release, for he has never left my mind or heart since he passed beyond this place of dreaming and awakening. He wrote in a card only weeks before his death "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

~in memory of Don and the years we were as one~