Addressing a Dream

Everything science has taught me — and continues to teach me — strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

Nothing disappears without a trace.

~Wernher von Braun

When I got over to Mom’s one day for our usual weekend visit, she seemed a little anxious.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she sighed.

“I’ve had the same dream three nights in a row,” she said, sinking into the kitchen chair. “And you know that’s happened before.”

Indeed, several times Mom had dreams one night after the next, only to have them come sort of true the very next week.

Once, she dreamt a plane crashed at the airport five miles from our house. In her dream, sixty-one people were injured. She transposed the numbers because, in reality, sixteen people were hurt in a crash at the airport a few weeks later.

Another time, she’d dreamt of being at a funeral, unable to see who had passed away. Three nights in a row, she’d walked up to the casket and looked in but couldn’t make out the face of the deceased. And then Grampa Jerry died.

So, I could understand her anxiety now.

“Tell me the dream,” I said, expecting a similar tale.

“That’s just it. I only dreamt an address: 3636 South 39th Street. It’s crazy!” she said.

Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the address. It would be close to my college, which was in the 3400 block of South 39th Street.

“Let’s get the map and look it up,” I said.

We unfolded the big county street map onto the kitchen table and stood, bending over the tiny letters and lines. I traced my finger along 39th Street, south past my college, into what would be the 3600 block.

Mom gave a gasp and sat back down. My finger had ended up in the middle of a cemetery.

“Oh, I don’t like this,” Mom said.

“Do we have any family buried there?” I asked.

It turned out there were several family members buried there, including Mom’s maternal grandmother, known as Gramma Mac.

“Maybe she’s trying to tell you something,” I suggested, and we tried to think what that might be. Gramma Mac had been gone for decades.

Mom didn’t have the dream again, but a week later her dear Uncle Lester died after a serious illness. He was to be buried in that very cemetery on a rainy spring morning.

Had Gramma Mac known her son would be joining her soon? Was that what she’d wanted to tell Mom?

After the internment, Mom directed me to Gramma Mac’s grave in the older part of the cemetery. I drove slowly down the narrow road that wove through the grounds as Mom scanned the terrain.

“Here!” she said, pointing.

Looking at the headstone, we took a moment to pay our respects. Then, when we looked up, it was easy to see South 39th Street straight ahead of us, exactly in line with the old family plot. To the east, several blocks away, we could see the houses on 35th Street. Gramma Mac’s grave was parallel to a little blue Cape Cod.

“Let’s go drive by that house and see what number it is,” I said, thinking, Could it be?

The blue house had shiny brass numbers we could read from the street.

Of course, they were 3636.

Mom gave another gasp, and I got a chill up my spine. If a grave could have a street address, Gramma Mac’s would be 3636 South 39th Street, the very address Mom had dreamt about three nights in a row. Now, Gramma Mac’s son, Lester, had come home to her only a week later.

“That must have been what Gramma was trying to tell me,” Mom said, but we could never really know.

Still, it was an amazing experience, another in a line of interesting dreams that hinted at premonition of some sort.

Mom summed it up best. “Well, I’m glad Gramma Mac picked me to share it with,” she said. “It’s nice to know she’s still thinking of me after all these years.”

— Kate Fellowes —