Dreams of my Mother

Here are two dreams I had years ago, some months apart.

Shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer, I dreamt I was in my parents’s bedroom. My mother was stood outside her wardrobe, her suitcase open on the bed. She was putting things into it. Gently, slightly sadly, she told me she was packing for along trip and didn’t know if she would be coming back.

A month or so after she died, I dreamt I had run into her, in a farm yard. I hadn’t seen her for some time and was happy to see her there. We were making small talk, but I had a nagging feeling that something important had happened concerning her. I had forgotten something crucial to our exchange. Suddenly, as I neared waking, knowledge of the past few months returned to me. Surprised, I blurted out, ‘You’re not supposed to be here!’

‘Oh,’ she said agreeably, and walked around the corner of a barn out of sight.

‘Wait!’ I ran after her, turning the same corner, but she was gone, nowhere to be seen.

A dream I had

I had a friend who had an inverse fairy godmother. She would always grant the opposite of whatever he wished for. If he wished to go see a concert somewhere, she would wave her wand and it would guarantee that we wouldn’t get to the concert, but something else really good would happen, always better than whatever wish he had. His life was always full of unexpected and amazing events.
This made him very popular, because when you were hanging around with him, you never knew what was going to happen, but that it was going to be good. His friends thought this was awesome and it seemed like his fairy godmother was benefitting them more than him. It’s not that he didn’t also benefit from his inverse wishes, but he was constantly frustrated that none of his wishes ever came true. He seemed unaware that he lived a charmed life. He wasn’t even aware that his fairy godmother existed, but I had seen her.
Still, he was relatively happy despite himself and had a good sense of humour. He never learned to stop wishing for things, though or to wish aloud for the opposite of what he actually wanted. He just smiled and carried on, surrounded by his friends.
And then I woke up and all the specifics of this dream faded from my mind, as dreams do, but the general plot remained. Weird, innit