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Around 7 A.M., I awoke with this laughing dream, unlike I ever remember receiving:

Ellen Sheire, a close friend, invited me to join her for a weekend gathering of mixed artists, thinking I needed a change. My tension mounted as we drove through a heavily wooded area to the rustic house, built by the owners.

Games, unusual artworks crafted from materials taken from the environs, some painted in brilliant colors set everyone laughing. Off to myself, I marveled over the originality of the displays, also painfully aware that I longed to slough off my conservative attire, to laugh more, and to somehow become more colorful.

The last morning, I began cleaning up the dining room, littered by the guests, but Ellen stopped me and asked: “Don’t you know that half the fun of giving a party is cleaning up afterwards?”

This dream, rollicking with laughter—my jaws, my sides still aching from the hilarity—taught me to let up on my end-time babble. Everything that lives must die. My close friend and Jungian analyst in real life, Ellen Sheire, who knew me as no other ever did, always provided an antidote for the multiple complexes in which I stumbled and fell. And, here she surfaces in this dream with another antidote: No need to be spun around in grief’s vortex when there’s the option of laughter.

Again, like so many of those Friday morning hours, in her analysis room, I’ve been helped. I’m grateful and pray for fresh courage to laugh down the monstrous catastrophes spawned from fear of the unknown—as if there was no God to bring me home. In the meantime, there’s more psychic excavation to be done.