Grief, reflected in the last blog, weighed my spirit for the remainder of the day. My brush with mortality still rankled. My body had been and still is the carrier of my spirit. Without my body, how would I interact with the world around me? It’s all I’ve ever known. And the months of new learning living with a terminal illness—How would that continue? Or would it? I felt like a helium balloon, hovering over the sidewalk, swayed by lackluster breezes.

Last evening’s phone meeting with my CPA buddies just happened to focus upon grief with its emotional and intellectual implications. I was still socked within its strictures; its snug fit rendered me powerless. How I welcomed the oblivion of sleep, if sleep would come

But it did, immediately, and without medication.

From my psyche, emerged the feathery outline of this dream:

A nearby funeral home was waking a friend, whose loss attracted numerous mourners, I among them. While I stood in line to offer condolences to her family, I noticed a silver-haired neighbor listening to a couple, his soft gray eyes following each word, his clean-shaven jaw slack. His contemplative manner had drawn my attraction in the past, but no opportunity for our meeting had ever occurred. I was content to let him find me if we were supposed to meet.

 It seemed like delicious hours passed in his presence. Eventually the lounge of the funeral home faded—only this loving man remained, though distant from me. When I awoke ten hours later, gone was the heaviness that had snagged me in bondage. I was free again, and would be, until next shocked by my body’s certain demise.

Only Precious God knows when.