Member-only story
An Afternoon with My Dead Dog
A Lucid Dream 4
Here I am again. I’m in my living room. My parents are home and they’re idly conversing with one another as they go about their business. I look down and see my dog, Boo. She looks back up at me, her tail wagging back and forth gently. Streaks of white and gray have colored her black fur but oceans of joy pervade her tired eyes.
She’s here with me… but I remember her dying. I remember mourning her. I remember the weeks spent debating about what was best for her and I remember our family making that awful, awful decision. And yet — here she is, happy, oblivious, and ambling through my living room toward me with a wagging tail and a timeless grin. I get on the ground to meet her. I look at her closely and question whether what I’m seeing is real. I hold her as tightly as I can as she moans in my ear the way she always used to when she was still alive.
I try to grapple with how it’s possible for me to be here now with the dog I so clearly remember losing. The disconnect is a lot to make sense of. I begin to realize that the only way that what I’m seeing is possible… is in the midst of a dream. I begin to understand what a privilege it is to be here once again with this beloved creature of my past. As I hold her in my arms, the entire world feels as though it warms up around me.
