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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My Third Wife Changes Her Name: Gender Issues, Ex-Wives, and Surname Conflicts

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The Blended Family Wedding of Kristina Katayama (L) and William Bass (R) with vows to their children (Morgan, Kate, & Talia) and with their Community.

I married Kristina this past Saturday the 11th of July 2009. She was the great love of my life at that time. We have been together over 7 years, ever since late 2001, as I write this essay. Kristina is a vibrant and dynamic woman, bold, sexy, intelligent, professional, and passionate. She lives full out as a Postmodern Age human being. We married ourselves privately in bed back in May 2005 and became officially engaged in November 2005. We intended to celebrate with a public, legal wedding in the summer of 2006. Didn’t happen. We felt too busy with careers and children, however, and lived as if already married. In a way we already were. And in 2009 we finally did it. Up to our Wedding Day, Kristina used her father’s family name, “Katayama,” as her own. And after our wedding she insisted on changing her name. Or, to be more accurate, adding my surname to hers.

“What?” I asked incredulously. “That’s old-fashioned culturally-ingrained male domination of females. I don’t own you. I’ve fought against this kind of bigotry my whole life.”

I had more to say, too. “I LIKE the Japanese sound of ‘Katayama.’ Mine is an “Olde English” name. I like the global feel of Bass and Katayama being together as a couple. It supports Euro-Asian-American planetary integration! My name is short and monosyllabic. Yours is long and lovely with four syllables emphasizing the same vowel. And don’t you dare hyphenate! That’s a monstrosity!” Blah blah blah.

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My Beloved & I (2001-2013)

I love this amazing woman, Kristina Katayama.

Then 12 and a half years later we divorced, darn it, but not before we dove thru our Hearts deep into the Center of the Sun.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina, April 23, 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass, March 17, 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina in Seattle on 23 April 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass for this essay on 17 March 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Note: Click on any photo to expand it, and click again to make it even larger. Click the back arrow to return to the essay. All photographs protected by Copyright with All Rights Reserved. Thank you, and enjoy!

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