Wedding Ghosts and the Enigma of a Recurring Dream

A Ghost Wedding in the Future leads to healing long buried Grief from the Past

Recurring dreams are rare for me. When they do occur, however, they return over and over and over again. They distract me from my daily real-life responsibilities with a growing obsession with efforts to determine just what in the world do these wild dreams mean? What did they mean back then? What do they mean now? And do the meanings of one person’s dreams ever represent anything for any other person?

Had a dream back in February 2020 as the COVID-19 Pandemic was spreading around our planet that recurred so often the dream haunted me even while awake. The dream was unusually short in duration and didn’t peel off into a reel of others. So often one dream would roll into another and then into another, each one a different dream yet all seem interconnected and linked together like books in The Bible. Perhaps what felt most intriguing and somewhat disturbing was what and who were not in this odd dream such as current partners. The dream felt more realistic and less fantastical, and it also felt incredibly prophetic. To come true, however, the events within the dream would have to go against the grain of current, on-going, real-life relationships. As it turns out, this dream unleashed a torrent of long-buried pain and, ultimately, resolution and liberation. My subconscious had to jack hammer it into my awareness more than five years after I first experienced this dream.

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In Remembrance of Ellen

A wonderful friend from long ago passes on

Ellen died on Thursday 20 January 2022. Her transition was peaceful. She and her wife was surrounded by dear friends local to the area. Pancreatic cancer is a horror. So many people I know have battled cancer of all kinds. Some died, such as my parents, a grandfather, and my partner’s Mum. Cancer is an umbrella term for a complex of nightmarish diseases. May cures for all cancers be found. Put cancer in the past. Make it history. Kill it, dammit. Kill it! Because I miss my friend. Wish we’d had more time to visit. Last saw her in circa 1995 when she and Ron last visited me and Gwen at Orca Landing, an urban cooperative household in Seattle. They were on their way from southwestern North Carolina to bike the West Coast. Decades slid by in time. She and Deb were gonna come out and visit us in Seattle before heading into the North Cascades National Park Complex back in the Summer of 2020. The double punch of the COVID-19 Pandemic and megawildfires with smokestorms, unfortunately, caused them to cancel. So never got to reconnect in person. We texted a few times. She and Deb decided to get away into the Boundary Waters Wilderness instead. There they had a great time canoeing and camping, and that was the last I heard from her.

Yeah, I miss my friend. Ellen had a delightfully chuckley laugh that could range from a loud bark to a jolly trainwreck of silly giggles. Ellen loved animals and spent much of her later life rescuing and caring for them. Was an activist in PAWS. Born in New Jersey and worked in New York. Worked for Playboy even! For the corporate NYC side, that is. Was too much for her. So she met Ron and together they moved away from the big urban corridors for a life of outdoor adventure and rural, small-town living. She had strong opinions and fierce convictions. Loved exploring the wilderness by foot, by boat, and spent many long miles pedaling her bike. Ellen Kilgannon is forever unforgettable.

From my words to her on the Caring Bridge site: Continue reading