Thanks for the visit, Bev

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Years ago my aunt lived with a woman named Bev. As a preteenager at the time, I thought Bev was a little bit weird. She loved old-time music and played the accordion, and she even had a one-man band that she would bring out and play if she was sufficiently wired. But she loved to have fun, and she loved us kids as if we were her own. I still have several birthday cards from her.

Now that I’m an adult and have an interest in folk music myself, I wish I could spend some time with Bev, as I’m sure she would enjoy the concerts we frequently attend. But Bev and breast cancer did battle, and the cancer won. Dammit.

Anyway, yesterday my aunt came by for a rare visit, as she lives in Florida now. We had dinner and a good time. And last night I dreamed about Bev.

I have never been a “lucid dreamer” – I fall for every impossible ludicrous scenario I can invent. So there I was, talking to Bev as she lay in what appeared to be a hospital room, though apparently healthy, and not believing my eyes.

“Bev? Is that you?” I say.

“Yes, it’s me, how have you been?” She hugs me and I hug back, bewildered.

“I’m fine, but what have you been up to?”

“Oh, this and that.”

Just then Mr. S came into the room. “Dear, this is Bev. I’ve told you about her.” Greetings are exchanged. Mr. S becomes distracted and I have a moment alone with her. “Bev . . . can I ask you something? And it’s OK if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

I hesitate, and finally whisper, a little teary. “Bev . . . we thought you died.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes . . . you had cancer and you got very sick. You had to have a mastectomy. . . . You showed me your scar. . . . I was young at the time and it was kind of upsetting, but now for some reason I think it was a good thing and it doesn’t bother me anymore. But Bev, where have you been?”

“Oh, I’ve been around.”

“I can’t believe you’re really here. Do you think I really dreamed all that about you being sick – or is this the part that I’m dreaming?”

She smiled. “I think you’ll find that this is the part that’s a dream.”

Fade to black.

I’ve been awake for a good hour, and I still feel as though Bev was here, fifty miles and twenty years away from where she died. I was a minor figure in her life, but all the same I’m glad she stopped by.

Anybody else had visitors like this?

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Oh yes. I’m a firm believer that people we cared about that have passed, will return to us in our dreams sometimes. I feel like they can do this because when we are sleeping, we are ‘open’ to the ‘other side’…moreso than when we are when we are awake. All of our defenses are down when we are asleep, and they can easily come into our dreams, to help us out in some way, or just visit.

You should be happy to have had such an encounter. Consider yourself lucky!
Bev had been on your mind and she came through to let you know that she was ok.

Very cool.

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I have visitations on occasion. I can’t say frequently, however. They’re something distinct from a plain old dream, because my dreams always have a surreal quality to them. Visitations can lamost be drop-fit into my life because of the ‘real’ feel to them

My grandmother was always a religious woman, and during a visit, I asked her what God and heaven were really like.

“You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

The scariest one (not really) involved my mom, abot 3 weeks before she died. In it, she drove 2+ hours to have Saturday breakfast with me. We met in the parking lot of the restaurant, and I was agog, because she looked healthy, and not wasting away from lung cancer like she was IRL.

“Mom, I know you’re really in bed, dying of cancer, but I just want to look you over as you are now, because you’re healthy.”

“Well, this is how I want you to remember me, not as I realy am now.” I had to call my sister when I got up just to make sure Mom didn’t go during the night.

I’ve even been visited by my departed dog, which consisted of us wrasslin’, and my receiving a severe face wash.

I always enjoy visits.

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Mr. S and the late great Miss Emily Kimberly had a very close bond. I often felt like a third wheel, although I loved her too. After she died he had a few visits from her – consisting of her “play bark” in his ear, which could not have come from another dog, when he was lying in bed just after awakening. He believes it was really her, and he would have been the first to scoff at such a thing. He also thinks she was just checking in to tell him she was OK, and still around. We make sure to talk to her still, and we keep her ashes on the piano, just in case she’s hanging around near her physical remains and the people who loved her.

I seem to have something in my eye.

5

I, too, believe in and have visitations. The dreams are so vivid that they seem real, and I have had them from both of my grandfathers as well as (yes!) my husband’s ex-wife.

I’ve cherished every one of them.

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I’ve had visits from my FIL, and so has my MIL and my husband. They always make me feel warm and fuzzy, like he’s still around.

I’m not upset in the dream, just happy to see him. I remember one where he called me on my cell phone and I gasped, “How are you doing this?” and he smugly says, “Oh, I have my ways.”

Unfortunately I woke up before I could pass the phone to Ivylad.

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Similar thread

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When I’m really wrapped up in a major life problem, I get visited by one of my dead aunts. It’s like having a greek chorus in my dream, pointing out things that I’m just too worried to see.

Once in college I was having a really bad time with bad grades and bad boyfriend. One night I dreamed my dead grandfather was sitting in a chair talking to me, telling me that everthing would work out. I sat on the floor next to him and cried and cried as he just stroked my hair. All night, I rested my head on his knee and he stroked my hair. It was the best dream I ever had.

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Guys, your fantasies are charming and I am glad that your subconscious has found a way to comfort your conscious mind, but do you think that a board dedicated to “fighting ignorance” is a fitting place for superstition and irrational beliefs?

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I’ll take what I can get, WD.

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Please. Our rational minds may dismiss these as subconscious dreams, but if it gives comfort in times of pain and distress, who does it hurt to believe a loved one may have come to visit?

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Go start your own thread. Please don’t shit in this one.

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Just ignore him. He lives in the Pit and just wanders out every now and then to point out the supremacy of being him.

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Weirddave: Most of the posters here are just sharing their stories of times when they felt comforted by the presence–real or not–of a departed friend or pet. The goal of this thread is to share similar stories, not debate whether there’s any supported science behind them. So, if you do want to debate what’s being presented here, please go start a thread in Great Debates. This isn’t the place for your objections.

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One of my high school teachers died when I was in college. I hadn’t liked him very much during high school, but between high school and the time when he died, I realized how much he’d taught me. For almost a year and a half after he died, I regularly had dreams that I was talking to him. I don’t remember anything he said, but sometimes I would say something about “they said you were dead” and he’d just laugh. I’m kind of sad that I don’t have those dreams any more.

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This is different, but kind of the same, and still every time I think of it, I get chills.

The summer before bus kid started 1st grade, bus wife and I commuted into the city, having just moved out back to the town I grew up in. My mom and dad watched the kid-ling all day long. Actually my dad did since mom was still working. Dad lost part of one leg to diabetes, had suffered some micro-strokes that impaired his speech slightly, but nothing else.

The kid and grandpa, already very close as she was the only grandchild at the time, bonded like you wouldn’t believe. Just became incredibly close friends, and she would never ever talk to anyone else about the things they spent all day talking about. “Just stuff grandpa and I talk about…” was all I ever got out of her.

One sunday morning, mom calls me. Her, the wife and kid were planning to shop while I did some work around the house then met them at mom/dad’s for dinner after.

Mom says my dad had some kind of problem, it looks pretty bad, the paramedics were on the way. I got there to see the paramedics working on my dad, unconscious, flailing about somewhat, obviously in bad shape. They’re going to take him to the hospital, so I race back home to gather the family. I pull my wife into the bedroom and give her the skinny. Neither of us wants to tell the 6-year old bus kid, but I get to.

I walk into her room where she’s already dressed for the shopping trip. I sit on her bed and explain that we have to go the hospital right now because grandpa’s very sick, and needs us there with him.

Turning to face me, cool as a cucumber she says:

“We don’t have to hurry daddy, grandpa’s already gone. He came into my room and said good bye to me right before you left a little while ago”

::yes, feel the shiver now??::

I said no, bus kid, this is real, we should go. She insists he came and said good bye to her and that she wouldn’t see him for a long time but that she should never forget all the things they talked about, and that he’d be keeping an eye on her.

Then she descibed in detail what my dad was wearing as the paramedics were taking him out of the house. Even that he only had one slipper on.

We get to the hospital, where sometime that afternoon the neuroligist shows us the film of dad’s brain showing the totality of the stroke, and explains that he’s in a vegetative state and probably has been since the thing hit him.

Three days later, dad finally died, my daughter through out that week, and the funeral never shed a tear, which worried the hell out of us. She seemed to be holding us up.

Side note: 8 years later, she graduated from Jr. High, from the school that was named for him - Bus Kid’s Grandpa Jr. High. It’s all she wanted was to be able to graduate from “grandpa’s school.”

I’ve mentioned in other threads Ernie, the Best. Cat. Ever. He was her little bodyguard and took care of her, actually guarding her room each night while she slept. Ernie was sick a lot that summer, and finally died the very afternoon of the first day she started attending “grandpa’s school”. Almost like you could hear the old guy say, “ok kitty, I got her from here, you go rest now…”

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Wow. Amazing and very sweet.

How did Grandpa get a school named after him? He was clearly quite a guy.

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Thanks, HE was amazing is how. He was president of the school district (K-12 unit district) for over 21 of the 23 years he sat on the board, was one of the founders of the local library district…No time to list it all. The summer before he died he announced he wasn’t running again, and the board which had a history of naming schools for local people, said they’d name that school for him.

The obits called him a “community activist” and politician, and I guess he was but he was one of those people that every one maneged to like. Even the people that didn’t like thr things he did, usually ended up liking him.

She’s 19 now, and ask her who her best friend IS, and she’ll still tell you grandpa.

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Of course I will abide by your stipulation Skip, although what I posted was IMO a fairly mild observation concerning the truth versus superstitions, one that as far as I can tell breaks NO board rules, but is this forum the place for insults either? If not, I wonder why DeVena is getting a pass on attempting to denigrate me?

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People were posting experiences of interactions with loved ones during a painful period of their life. There’s a lot of emotion tied up in them, and your tsk-tsking them was, IMHO, inappropriate and out of place.

For the most part, we are a rational bunch. And yet sometimes we take comfort in the coincidences of dreams about loved ones. There’s no need to pop our bubbles, which is how you came across. We know they’re bubble, but they’re pretty and we enjoy them.