Dream. Memory.

Dreams, and memory associated with the dreams.

1975(?)-1995(?)

I have very vivid dreams. I look forward to being entertained most nights by them, and I don't spend a great deal of time analysing them or looking for meaning. I like to share them with people when I think they will be entertaining.

Well, when I was a teenager, I had a series of dreams about conversations with a man in a black suit. He was middle aged, good looking in the Leonard Cohen sort of way, serious but not unfriendly. He was a fully realised personality in a dream world of what were usually sketchy images. I instantly felt he was some sort of distant relative or family friend. Someone I could trust. A nice character to dream about, anyway.

These dreams were interesting to me because he always asked after my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, my brother, but especially my mother. (My mother is a nervous and somewhat wounded creature who is not always as strong as she could be.)

I would tell him honestly how she was doing, and talk about things that had happened in my family since our last conversation.

I probably "met" the man in the black suit 20 times or more over several years, at irregular intervals, each time having a different conversation with him. If my mother had not been doing well, he would come more frequently, until he heard she had felt better.

The subject of dreams came up in conversation with my mother IRL infrequently. She was always on the lookout for sacreligious behaviour, and she thought, I suppose, that talking about dreams could turn that way. It was too much like psychology (which was Evil) for her.

She had never, ever shared a dream with me and didn't usually like it when I shared mine with her, but sometimes in my enthusiasm for telling my dreams, I forgot she might not like to hear them.

I mentioned the man in the black suit. She blanched.

"How is he?"

She, you see, used to dream about a man in a black suit, Mediterranean in apprearance, that would ask about her mother, her brother, her sisters. Mostly though he seemed to be there for her own companionship. She dreamed about him often until she was in her later teens or early 20's. Then she abruptly stopped dreaming about him.

"He's good. He likes to hear me say that you are well. He keeps coming back until he hears that."

No, we don't know "who" he is. Neither of us ever caught a name. I haven't seen him in a long time but I should ask my eldest son if he has seen him, maybe.