Stephen

The Dream: I’m in a school-like setting. I enter a classroom and see Stephen at the front of the room, conferring with 3 or 4 other people. I only glimpse him behind the others. I am dressed fashionably, in a mauve hooded cape over a slim skirt. I am aware of being glamorous. I walk through the room toward a back exit, hoping Stephen will notice me. I’m not sure whether or not he does.

I leave the room, wandering the hallway. Will Stephen follow me? Seek me out? “He was the love of my life,” I think. Then I realize that can’t be right. What about my husband? I think about my attachment to Stephen, feeling it’s ridiculous. In love with a gay man? How utterly futile. What is the attraction? I ask myself. We connected, I decide, on an artistic level.

Interpretation: The outfit I’m wearing in this dream was triggered by my watching children draw Little Red Riding Hood on a TV show. I had been reading about visitation dreams on-line, which no doubt inspired the visit from Stephen, a dear friend who died in 1991. As the dream puts these images together, the cape becomes mauve, the color of mourning, and I learn (I’m in a school setting) how to deal with loss by becoming very practical (the relationship was futile; I have another love) and by connecting the lost person to something that I still have, my interest in art.