Thursday, March 22, 2018

What does it mean?

Occasionally I dream about family members whom I haven't seen in years, like my parents or my children. It always features them as I remember them, frozen in time in their fifties or adolescent years.

This morning I was going through my usual anxiety dream, being at the university late in the semester trying to find out where and when my final exams were going to be held, when I hadn't been to any class since the first week, and wondering if I could pass the English exam without even knowing which books the class had read that semester.  The dream morphed into a commotion at the institution, which had changed into a Junior High school, and students were carrying a comatose fellow student up the stairs to their homeroom.

I went to help, being an adult among children, and discovered that the semi-responsive child was my oldest child as a fifteen year old (he's in his thirties now), and I picked him up and started carrying him in my arms, wondering where I should take him immediately.  My child whispered to me, "Narcotics," and I thought overdose and discovered, by placing my hand over his left side, that his heart was racing palpably.

A teacher hurried up and said, "This is our thirteenth narcotics case so far today."  Talk about an opoid crisis.

The dream ended as I was carrying my lolling son into the cafeteria where a security guard rushed up, asking me how I was related to the victim.  I proudly but worriedly said I was his father.  I hope my oldest child is well.

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