At 7:45 A.M., I woke with this significant dream:

I’m invited to attend the reunion of my high school class from Villa Duchesne. It will be held on a garden patio. It is balmy moonless evening, pitch-dark when I arrive. Animated voices surround me as I find a place and sit down. I notice the cloth-covered tables are small, round, only accommodating three guests. Across from me, I hear JoAnne share a funny story. Then, waiters set narrow platters of delectable foods among us from which we eat.

I ask my Dreamer’s help in working with this dream story, its pitch-dark setting filled with connotations of death: my deceased classmates, the moonless night bereft of orientation and relatedness.

A solitary, I had little in common with my peers when growing up, other than sitting in the same classrooms, occasionally attending reunions hosted by the school. Later, however, I learned to honor our differences and esteem them for the women they had become. That awareness launched occasional potlucks in my home, filled with animation similar to that in the dream. In subsequent years, however, deaths thinned our meetings until they stopped altogether.

Again, in the dream I hear the laughter of my classmates as if cramped in my living room, their bracelets jangling on their wrists while emphasizing a point. I’m perplexed that I do not see them, but I remember JoAnne’s facial expression,still among us, as she regales her listeners. In Jungian terms, she suggests my extraverted shadow, with its discipline of deepening communication with my caregivers as my symptoms change.

This dream, one of a kind, mirrors the shaping up of my end time, tinged with joy. I’ve only to participate, one day at a time, letting HP do for me what I cannot do for myself. (From the Promises in AA’s Big Book)