Is this a dream?

I've had lucid dreams in the past, dreams where I am aware that it's a dream and can alter the course of events. But it never occurred to me that I might combine lucid dreaming with a visitation dream.

This morning, I'd had a couple of visitation dreams. Then, I was sitting at a table at a cafe with Sandy, discussing the dreams I'd had earlier. I honestly thought I was awake. I remarked that the room we were in looked a lot like the room in one of my dreams—and that in the book I'd been reading, the author talked about recognizing such resemblances, learning from them. I told Sandy that I'd enjoyed seeing her in my dream, since she'd been dead. And then we were both kind of puzzled. I had a strong memory of grieving, of the darkness and the emptiness I've felt so much over the past few months. But here she was in front of me. I remember thinking, wow, I'm going to have to talk to my therapist about this. Why have I been imagining her dead?

Sandy said she didn't remember dying. And then she said she didn't know how she'd returned — so she really had been dead at some point. I began to question whether she really had returned. We were figuring this out together. I asked why, if she'd returned, was she not in bed with me at night. She said she'd slept on the living room floor — that our bed was too tall. I told her I'd have joined her, but she said I always get cranky when I sleep on the floor (true).

In my earlier dream, we'd been in that room as she was applying for jobs. Now, they called her from our table to the back room for an interview. I got the check from the server. Again, this was incredibly real, and he was a little annoying, pointing out the total because there were some other stray numbers on the bill (timestamps and things). And then Sandy came out from the back room, seemingly forgetting I was there, got in the car, and started to drive away. I was surprised and annoyed that she'd leave without me, but there was something else weird about it. I realized she'd gotten into the passenger's side. How was she driving?

Oddly enough, I don't have any pix of her driving from
the passenger side of a cartoonish car. But here she is in
the back seat of the vanpool van many years ago.

I knocked on the window and she let me in. I asked her just to keep the car parked for a moment, and I told her we were in a dream. She was startled. I pointed out that there were steering wheels in random places in the car, including the passenger's side (and one at my feet on the driver's side). I needed to go back and actually pay for our meal, but because this was a dream, I was afraid of losing her, so I asked her to do a U-turn and come back for me. She was pleased by that. Sandy always liked doing U-turns. I got out and walked toward the restaurant, and watched as she approached. Other traffic was doing bizarre things to get out of the way —one car literally moved sideways, like a crab, into an alley. As Sandy drove, our car became more cartoonish. I paid the server and then pointed out to her that our car was looking a little like Herbie the Love Bug. We looked at each other and I asked, which one of us is dreaming that? Neither of us knew.

But from then, we started having fun with the dream. One of us came up with twin daughters, around seven or eight years old. I think that must have been Sandy, because she was very invested in feeding everyone and wanted them to go to the store to buy corned beef. I asked what I was supposed to eat. I said, "Even in a dream, I'm a vegetarian. And if I weren't, I still wouldn't eat corned beef!" Everyone laughed. It was like we were writing and starring in our own sitcom.

I won't bore you with all the details. I wouldn't find it so fascinating had it not been pretty apparent that Sandy and I were creating this dream together. I resisted waking up, kept wanting to drop deeper into the dream, to spend more time with her, to play.

So many of the visitation dreams have been heavy and deep, conversations about who we are to each other, whether she can return, whether she even wants to. I didn't realize how much I'd missed playing with her. I've been in a great mood all day.