Psychology Of A Dream

The psychology of dreams is something that I never usually think about for one reason only, I don't have dreams, at least any that I can remember by the time I rise from a sleep.  When I awake I am thinking of what will be going on in my day.  I generally sleep very soundly and fortunately straight through the night without having to get up in the middle of the night like most men have to at my age. However the other morning I woke with quite a start, I don't like calling it a nightmare as it involved my late mother.  I was sitting at their dining room table and my mother approached me, sitting a jar in front of me and saying "Here, I'm giving this to you, I know you would want it."  At that point I gasped and sat bolt upright in bed.
Many years ago when I was a small child I remember visiting my grandparents, the big old house were my mother was born and raised had a very large old kitchen and on the back side was a sun porch were my grandmother would do the laundry and there was a large chest freezer.  On the wall behind the freezer was a wide shelf that was filled with miniature trinkets from Cracker Jacks, odds and ends of glass trinkets. 

Many of them had been found while working in the large garden and orchard behind the house.  I was fascinated with my grandmothers miniature collection but I was told that I could only "Look at them, not touch."  While we were away in Europe the old kitchen was remodeled and the old sun porch was removed.  On our return to the US, I asked my grandmother what had happened to her miniature collection.  She told me she still had them all but they were put away.  When my grandmother passed away her daughters divided the contents of the family possessions among the four sisters.  A few weeks later I was sitting at my parents dining room table as I had been in my recent dream, my mother was going through a box of things from my grandmother's house and to my delight she pulled out a jar filled with my grandmother's miniature treasure.  I was very excited and said, "Lets look through it." But my mother was tired and simply put it back in the box and said, "Perhaps another day."  As anyone knows going through the loss of a loved one's belongings and the memories that such things can conjure up is quite exhausting so I said no more about the jar and soon it was totally forgotten until the other morning when I sat bolt upright with the shock of my late mother handing me the jar in my dream.  I called my sister and told her about the dream and asked if she remembered Mom lifting the jar out of the box that night long ago?  She said yes but had no idea what had become of it since then.  I was determined to find out so I stopped by my fathers house to look.  I decided that since she came in from the garage in my dream that the cupboards there might be a place to look and to my surprise the first door I opened there was the jar sitting there at eye level.

The jar, it might as well be filled with gold coins because after that dream it is just as valuable.

I swallowed hard and thanked my mother out loud, and with a trembling hand I firmly grasped the jar and closed the door.  After living all these years with our house ghost Lucy pulling shenanigans at Menagerie Manor, I am not surprised by such things.  But when your own late mother comes to you in a dream and hands you a jar of treasures you were denied in the past, then I have to admit I was a bit unnerved by this whole episode.  Thanks Mom, I will treasure it always and promise to "look but not touch".