Beatlick Travel Report #14: The Dead Fill My Dreams

Date: Feb 12, 2009 3:08 PM

Report #14


Here on the Slabs today, I feel content. But I want to dwell for a while on my mental state. Otherwise I don’t feel like this is a true representation of my experience.

The dead fill my dreams. Now I’m about six weeks into the trip so this was more pronounced earlier. It all started on about the third week.

Many, many times in my now protracted life I have been either sustained or tormented by my dreams And I give them a lot of weight and consideration.

So my dreams haven’t caused me any issues in months, if not years, but suddenly after the true realization that I had slashed all my moorings so to speak the dreams began. My dead loved ones, one after another night after night, came to call.

I dreamed of my father, who died when I was ten. This is the third time in my entire life that I have dreamed of him:

We are in the old 30s-something Chevy with a running board that my father was driving the night he collided with an 18-wheeler and died on site. It was a summer, sunny and mild. In the space of this small quiet little dream I recovered that feeling of an endless summer day, gently passing time together with my dad.

In the dream I remember wondering, maybe worrying, would he say something about getting a drink. He was an alcoholic and the subject was always fodder for an argument at home. But it wasn’t that way. He was mellow; just wanted to know what I thought, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go next.

Then I dreamed of Mother. I held a locket in my hand. It held a charm. When I held the charm up to my eyes to get a better look at it I saw a hologram. It was my mother all young and beautiful, just a cameo shot of her head and shoulders. She was laughing out loud (something I rarely ever saw) with her head thrown back and her blond bobbed hair bouncing. She was so happy.

And then I dreamed of Gloria, my friend of over 50 years who died last year – suddenly and tragically – in France . She was young, leading the show, driving the car and telling me what to do. Then came a procession of old neighbors, childhood friends, people I haven’t thought of in decades.


These dreams were wrenching at first, not traumatic or bad, but so strong, impactful… I call them “abiding” dreams… because that’s what it was like in my dream of my father. He was simply abiding with me, going along for the ride.

So Mother, Gloria, and all of them I believe have let me know that they abide with me. It has been profoundly comforting.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela