Last night I dreamt that I was cutting the grass behind the abandoned house next door, thinking about our missing neighbor Nancy and hoping she was OK. Then for some reason I entered her garage and behind her rusted '78 Camero was a sort of drawbridge and enormous castle keep--all in a building half the size of a boxing ring. With a great deal of trepidation I opened the door to the keep and saw nothing but a pile of blankets and towels. "Did she pile all her laundry in here?" I thought, and then Nancy emerged from the blankets, aged beyond the chronologically possible by some disease.
I expressed my concern and immediately hugged her and invited her to stay in our guest room until she was well.
"I was just hanging around to make sure somebody cared," she laughed. We joked a bit about old times shooting the shit over the back fence and then my alarm went off.
Just yesterday I'd thought about Nancy in the past tense, then berated myself for it. "She's probably at a new boyfriend's, or traveling around somewhere visiting cousins I don't know about," I thought. But now I'm not so sure. Last night's dream was of the type I've only ever had about dead people, and I've had several a few weeks after a friend died of this exact character.
