“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
― Bob Dylan, Lyrics:1962 2001

“I was in a dream last night. Was it yours?”
― me

It was late afternoon — unusual for me to have been in bed that long. I knew, no, I felt this would be my last day on Earth. Probably the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.

Why are you telling me this?

Because you were there, sitting beside the bed, holding my hand. I knew then that it was O.K. to go. Are you embarrassed?

Just a little but go on — I guess.

Then you and all the color in the room drained away. Even the walls — the walls, the furniture, the trees and slice of sky I could spy through the window, turned white. Not some antiseptic hospital white. Not the absence of color but what color had always wanted to be: its total presence. Somewhere between South Sea pearl, white diamonds, and — oh, I dunno — cottage cheese. You wanted to smear it on toast with a slice of lox.

Now here’s the weird part. Rick Astlie was there doing his MTV video “Never going to give you up” in a sharkskin suit with those 70s pencil legs.

But you hated everything 70s! Remember, I was there, too.

I know. Weird. Except it wasn’t Astlie in the suit; it was Morgan Freeman doing all those 70s dance moves.

Then the room turned Farrow&Ball red, crustini without the basil. It was the Dulwich Picture Gallery and every painting I ever loved was there: ‘Das Floß der Medusa,’ ‘The Martyrdom of Crispin and Crispinian,’ several by Holman Hunt and Alma-Tadema. And da Messina’s ‘Condottiere.’ Damn, I’ve got taste.

And Morgan Freeman was there, too, minus the sharkskin suit.

Freeman was naked!?

No. Three-piece. You’d take him for an annuity salesman. I said ‘I thought You’d be Ella Fitzgerald,’ and He said ‘Oh, I could be, if that would give greater comfort, but she’s with Donald Trump just now.’

‘Trump?!’ I asked in a more accusatory tone than the moment called for. ‘I thought he’d be in the other place, you know, pitchforks, molten sulfur, Andy Kaufman.’

Then He shocked me: ‘This is what you’ve all got wrong. Everything’s Heaven. Some people just don’t get the one they expect.’

I gotta ask: What did you have for supper? This reeks of indigestion.

‘Of course it’s happening in your head, Harry, but why on Earth should that mean that it’s not real?’ By the way, when it’s your time, keep an eye out for Albus Dumbledore. This isn’t my dream, you know. You just watched Colbert, rolled over, and went to sleep. So all this is in your head, not mine.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy