2023-11-28: call
a strange dream last night. the first part distressing, and too strange to put here. the second part better. i'm making a phone call. i call my grandparents' number from their old house. my grandfather picks up the phone.
it's coming up on three years since he died, and this only the second time he's appeared to me in a dream. last time in person, no voice; this time in voice only. we talk. he seems surprised to hear me. he still remembers me — i remember in the dream worrying if he would or not, his last decade or so spent under the pall of dementia. but while he forgot a lot (in the real world), he never once forgot me; or, happily, my partner.
in the dream we talk for a while, and then i hang up after promising to call him back later. i look out into the back yard: grass and weeds; i can see the large tree and sheet metal fence from the last house. something runs past. a massive, red-eyed skunk, a dead cat cradled in its jaws.
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