The most notable part of the dream I woke from about a half hour or so ago, was my (maternal) grandma coming to visit me and telling me my grandpa had passed.
In real life, my grandma passed, after a long battle with Alzheimer's, last July. In the dream, she had come out of a coma-like state and was lucid and ambulatory again, only to find Grandpa deteriorating in dementia.
I was in a place that was an amalgam of a shopping mall and a school (everything from elementary to college) when Grandma came to me. She was dressed in a brightly colored jacket with a rose brooch on the lapel. She came and found me coming out of a room (class?) and pulled me out of the stream of students saying she had to tell me something. She put her hand comfortingly on my shoulder & said "Monica, your grandfather has passed." As tears came to my eyes she drew me in for a hug. After a while, I said "I'm sorry you didn't have more time with him... really." referring to the Alzheimer's & dementia. She said "Me too." Then she said she had to go for some reason and it was just me, tears in my eyes, wandering down the hall. I found a friend (loosely based on a few different real-life people) and tried to tell her, but she wanted to tell me about her own problems. I found a teacher/professor I felt close to (similar to the friend; not anyone in particular, but familiar)and she, too was distracted and changed the subject. I moved on through a crowd of younger kids & started trying to pull myself together to not alarm them. I went left around a corner and the hall opened into sets of stairs & escalators & the more mall-like part of the setting. I went around and up some stairs & then realized I'd gone the wrong way. When I passed the same teacher again I commented "I went the wrong way, I always forget & go up instead of down." and I went down a different set of stairs, which brought me to the main floor. I went across & realized I didn't have my backpack or any school supplies on me. I remembered that i had a locker off to my right and decided to go check to see if they were in there (crossing my fingers in hope that I didn't leave them in my car or at home), but I was worried I'd be late for my class and debated for a minute before deciding to check the locker first. During this time I had noticed, in passing, a table display to my left before the hallway to the classes. A guy (who was a cross between a couple of my best friends' husbands) bumped into it. There had been a little vase of flowers that looked rather like a milk bottle. It fell to the floor and shattered. There had also been a stand of cards (roughly postcard sized), presumably advertising something. A male professor stopped to help the guy up and said something about not worrying about the glass, but to go ahead & get to class, but as he picked up the card he marveled at it. In the dream, I had seen it before. It had a little panel in the middle that was holographic & changed scenes, one gorgeous landscape fading into the next. The professor said, rather choked up, "What a
beau-tiful pink forest. The other guy said, reverently,"I like the blue & purple and gold sunset." I visualized what I remembered of the card & tried to remember the scenes each was referring to and some others, maybe to think about which would be my favorite, though I wasn't as impressed with it as they were. I figured they were stock photos, like the screen savers/example photos that come on every computer and that the card was just an ad, though I couldn't remember what for. I think it was about this time that I woke up shivering. It wasn't until a few minutes later, after I'd warmed up/calmed down that I remembered the part about my grandparents. I realized at some point that I had a Smashing Pumpkins song from the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album. I just looked it up, it's 1979.
Since then, I haven't been able to sleep. It was about 3:15 then. Now it's 4.
