“Ghosts,”<\/a> an essay about my parents that I wrote partly to show my creative-nonfiction students that such work could be sold for money.<\/p>\nThe dream about my sister, however, was not as clear-cut as those I summarized in “Ghosts.” In it I was following her across down a sidewalk at a small shopping center, carying my cat Victor in my arms. For some reason, I wanted to show him to her.<\/p>\n
Today, as the Brits like to say, I’m gobsmacked. I had it all wrong. I thought the dream was about her, but it was not.<\/p>\n
It took a message from a friend in Arizona to enlighten me. Her dog may have terminal cancer, and she was talking about how animals will sometimes tell you when it’s time to go.<\/p>\n
Victor had been sick in late December, including a Christmas Day visit to the 24-hour emergency vet. Because we could not leave him at home alone, with the cat-sitter dropping by every other day, we canceled our planned trip to Arizona.<\/p>\n
In April, his medical problems returned. With him sprawled on the metal table in the examining room, clearly in pain, M. and I made the tough choice between more treatment and euthanasia.<\/p>\n
But not until my Arizona friend wrote to me about her dog did I understand the dream from weeks before. It was not just about my late sister.<\/p>\n
A month before the vet gave him the injection, I had already carried him in my arms to the Land of the Dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As some of my readers know, my oldest sister died in February. She was living in Lithuania, and I had not seen her for two years, although we were in touch by letters and email until just a few days before the end. In fact, one thing keeping me from working more both on this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[178,71],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dreaming","tag-dreams"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-655","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1300,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1300","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":0},"title":"Are Epiphany Dreams Found only in the Past?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Bryn Mawr Classical Review's book-review feed recently served up a review of William V. Harris's Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity The reviewer writes, Some combination of [cultural expectations, generic demands, and the imperatives of performance and publication.], Harris argues ...\u00a0 accounts for the relative frequency in antiquity of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0674032977","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6345","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":1},"title":"Animist Blog Carnival \u2014\u00a0Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The March Animist Blog Carnival, on the theme of dreams, is hosted at Pray to the Moon. We have a more modest collection of writings for this month. But, being an avid dreamer, I am not at all surprised. I find more often than not, when I begin to prattle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":960,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=960","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry with Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Anne Johnson on Dream Weaving.\u00b6 Anne Hill writes about dreaming too. (Is this a blog meme? Ann + dreams?)\u00b6 Northern Path likes the new Beowulf movie.\u00b6 Peg is upset about people stealing Pagan music.\u00b6 Caroline posts collage Tarot decks.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1668,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1668","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":3},"title":"Video Gaming and Lucid Dreaming","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Some researchers think that playing video games may help dreamers to have and control lucid dreams more ably. The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1140,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1140","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":4},"title":"Geomagnetic Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Talk about your \"earth energies\" \u2014 based on his own dream records, a researcher believes that the solar wind might influence dreaming.Looking for an explanation for recurring nightmares of leaving the house without your trousers on or losing your teeth? New research suggests you can blame the Earth's magnetic field,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1823,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1823","url_meta":{"origin":655,"position":5},"title":"A Movie That Takes Dreaming Seriously","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The best part about watching movies in the little mountain town is that after driving the four-block length of Main Street, we enter the darkness, winding through hills and a long canyon, then a mile of gravel road, and then home. It lets the movie's spell slowly fade, which is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5130,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}