How it Should Be

Recently, I met my grandmother in a dream. We were standing by a bright window in the corner of her living room.

The house, and her, were completely unchanged. The green carpet was laying on the floor untouched and the old pink wallpaper hung tight in the background. My grandmother stood tall and strong and her skin was the color of life.

She has been gone for nine years, but these dreams are my time with her. Although short, they are always lucid. For a few brief moments, I can pick and choose the things I tell her. I can touch her skin and hold her hand before she’s gone again.

This time though, I did not sum up the most important details that have transpired since her absence. I did not tell her that my mom was fine or that I traveled to a corner of the world, but blurted what was on my gut.

Without thought, I told her that I was scared and that I was worried about how things would end up. Steady, she touched my hand and said it will all be how it should. I could feel her skin, it was warm and more firm this time, not wrinkly and soft like it was during her last years of life.

Then it was over. She was gone and I was stepping through the door of her sun porch.

I like to believe that it is her visiting me in my dreams. That somehow, wherever her soul is, it can find me for these few brief moments and we can be together in the places of our past.

I don’t care if this is true or if it is a creation of my subconscious. I will continue to believe it because the truth does not matter. These moments with her help me. I wake up feeling joyful, the kind of joy I only feel when being reunited with someone I love.

I also choose to believe what she tells me. Things will end up exactly how they should. I will be in the places I need to be and I will become the person I’m destined to be.

I know this because my grandmother never lied to me, and I doubt she would choose her afterlife to make a habit of it.