A “dream” (?) I had a month after my father was killed. A long story, apologies for the book.

To start with, for clarification, I have always been a lucid dreamer, going back to childhood. Not every night. Not every dream. But every time I had realization in a dream that I was dreaming, I could control circumstances and events of the dream the entire rest of the time I was having it. Every single lucid dream. Without exception. Likely a few hundred times by the time this happened, just shy of my thirtieth birthday.

I was dreaming of playing backyard football with my friends as a kid. It’s a happy memory, and I dream about it now and then. This particular night, I was in lucid mode. I was having fun doing whatever I wanted (throwing 200 yard touchdown passes, running around like an Olympic sprinter, what have you… I kind of return to my ten year old self in this one).

Before one play, the football suddenly deflates and goes completely flat. Weird, I think to myself… I don’t feel like I caused that to happen. But whatever. I tell my friends I’ll change the football out, and we’ll get back to it. In my mind, I summon up the equipment shed from my campus recreation officiating days back on campus in college.

I open up the shed and step inside. It’s just as I remembered, of course, but kind of dark, not much light is bleeding in here from outside. I do a 180 toward the door to flip on the light. And I felt everything change. Everything. And I didn’t cause it. I also hadn’t looked at it yet. But I felt it.

Instant warmth. Comfort. A sense of peace that I can’t really describe… language isn’t really sufficient.

I turn around and see that I am in the foyer of a beautiful house, full of warmth. It is pure wood tones through and through.

I realize that I can really smell the air… The woods, and the ocean, in a perfect balance. I recall never having a sense of smell in any other dream, lucid or otherwise. I’m not panicked or worried, this place is just too peaceful for fear to be. Just confused.

Lying on a table next to an open window is my favorite cat from my childhood, Pudding. I give him a scratch right behind the ears in his favorite spot, he purrs, rubs into me… like hey buddy, missed you. Almost like it hasn’t been almost twenty years since he died, the last time I saw him. Realization dawns.

Realization that I still know that this is a dream. Or at least I thought it was. But if this is still a dream, and I realize this is so, why is all this stuff happening without my control? That’s certainly never been a thing in a lucid dream before.

And why am I smelling the fresh air of a forest that is twenty feet away from the ocean? Why do I have tactile feel of my furry buddy who died years ago? It feels like reality. Crisp, sharp, full of senses normally non-existent or dulled in normal dreams.

I catch some movement to my side and turn. Walking down the stairs, with a smile, is my dad. He’s clean, unhurt, in perfect shape… not at all like he was in the hospital when I last saw him, beaten up and brain dead. Before I even know what’s happening, he’s got me in a hug. I’m too stunned to react much.

“You’ve always been too stingy with the hugs,” he says. The feel of him, the sound of him talking… so real. I realize fully, finally, 100%. This is no dream. I hug him back, delighted.

As I pull away, all I can say is, “Aren’t I dreaming?”

He gives me the look he has always given me when I ask a completely stupid question. “Are you?” he says, all good-humor-light-sarcasm.

“But how… where are we?”

“My place,” he answers. “I needed to talk to you. Let’s go in there.”

He leads me down a side hall into a study. The few seconds while we walk, I’m still trying to reassert control. Open the floor and have us plunge through. Have him start dancing a jig. Have the house catch on fire. Anything to have proof that this is all a dream. Nothing works. As we enter the study, he tells me, “Morgan, son, seriously. Let go and relax.” He gives me that wry smile he gives when I’m being ridiculously amusing. “You’re not dreaming. Sit down.”

The room is supernaturally strong with the smell of cedar. Of pine. On the bookshelves, I’m noting some of my Dad’s favorites. Tolkien. Stephen King. James Clavell. A light bulb goes off over my head. This house is pretty much what my Dad would build if you gave him a perfect house button to press to make it come into creation. In a way, it feels like a piece of him, as real to me as he was right at that moment.

I take a seat in a wonderful leather bound chair. He sits across from me and says, “after this, we are going to talk about some things, and you won’t remember any of it consciously. But I had to tell you.”

And we talked. I felt the hours. I don’t remember the specifics… he was absolutely right about that. But I remember some feelings. Happiness and relief that he is okay here. Some good times… I think it was a good talk. Some sadness. I remember him hugging me goodbye. “I love you son.”

I woke with tears pouring out of me. Things “awake” felt… less real somehow, but still as they always were. I spent the next couple hours talking to my wife about what happened, in the middle of the night.

In the following days, I went back over my experience in my mind, while it was fresh. I came to the conclusion that it was most likely not a dream, because it was so unlike any other dream I had ever had before (or have ever had since). I left a small chance in my head (like maybe 2%) that it actually was a dream, because I’d been grieving pretty hard, and maybe there was some weird chemical imbalance in my brain chemistry or something. I was even slightly miffed at dad that he used this experience on me, and not my younger sister (who was taking this as hard as I was, if not more so).

Then, in July the same year, my mom fell ill and passed away. And I hit the wall of pain all over again. But this time, with a sliver of peace that I didn’t have last time. I realized that this is why Dad shared this experience with me. He knew this was going to happen, and soon.

I’ll never forget the gift. The view into the other side. The transition that makes my grief for those who have passed into a selfish thing… that I trust that they are fine, and I’m really just sad that I’m not going to see them again for a long while.