Dreaming of the Dead

How a dream visitation from an old friend helped heal the past

This dream was one of a series of what I believe to be true visitation dreams. Each dream in the series was evidential.

All of these dreams occurred over a period of a few months in 2012. Although I’ve had many wonderful, even life altering dreams since, this series was the last of its type.

This is the account as I first wrote it.

Today marks the one year anniversary of a good friend's passing. And I have been thinking of him even though our friendship ended many years ago.

We said goodbye apparently for good in 1984 when he was making plans to leave the area and I was making plans to marry someone else.

Naturally, a great deal has happened in the intervening years. So it's not surprising, or in anyway indicative of my feelings, that it has been a long time since I've thought of those days at all.

But three weeks ago I had a dream—and my friend Tim was the leading character. He was young and handsome in the dream and taller than I remembered. There was a remarkable brightness about him. And I know that kind of brightness.

He looked different but I recognized his energy. Sensing it as if I was standing next to him, stepping back in time to re-experience the soul vibration of a person I once loved.

In the dream, we met by chance. I was living alone in a big sunny apartment and he was working at a nearby market. We bumped into each other at his work and he asked if he could see me. Later on, standing in my dream apartment he told me he'd wanted to contact me before but was afraid that doing so would stir up old emotion.

Then he explained why he had let me down so many years ago and the things that had influenced him. The information was new but surprisingly coherent, fitting in neatly with events I had wondered about but never fully understood.

Seeing our history in this new light changed things. The weight of feeling I’d failed him lightened—and it was obvious to me, even in the dream, that Tim had come to make amends.

After we had finished talking, we set out together on a wide boardwalk with long strings of golden lights on either side. There was some kind of festival happening all around us and I was happy in a way I had almost forgotten. I told him he was right about the emotion. "I can feel it," I said. "Can you?"

He didn't answer or if he did, I don't remember. There was a knowing that our time was ending and that he had brought me back to where I was meant to be. When I woke up and considered the brilliance and the clarity of the dream, I knew he had passed.

I pulled my laptop into bed and found the obituary online. Tim's picture showed the same beautiful smile I'd loved so long ago. I saw that he had died in a hospice, some eleven months earlier, at the age of 52. I was sad I didn't know but happy to think he'd made it through okay.

Thank you for remembering me, as I remember you.