This Post is a Hug to Someone

Last night I had a very vivid dream about my co-workers, past and present, at the office where I currently work. We were all seated in a rather cramped room, around four rectangular tables that were set up with an opening in the middle. I was sitting at the table with my back to the door. To my right along the wall was a wooden coat cubby with a long shelf above where all our fall-weight jackets were hung on wrought iron hooks. It reminded me of where I hung my coat in elementary school.

There were two blue thigh-length windbreakers spaced well apart on those hooks. The bright blue windbreaker with some yellow writing was nearest me, and I knew it belonged to D. There was a medium blue
jacket further along that I knew belonged to G even though in the eight years I've known him I have never seen him wear a coat, a jacket, a sweater or anything but a dress shirt or a sweatshirt.

G. was sitting to my left about five seats over. D. was sitting at the table vertical to my table, toward the far end, one seat from the end.

I have no clue what we were doing- waiting to eat or having a meeting. There were things on the tables but I really wasn't paying to much attention to that.

G. abruptly stood up, walked behind me and grabbed D.s jacket and walked out of the room. Being the mother hen of the lot of us, I jumped up, grabbed G's jacket and went after him to make the exchange before he got into his car and left. I found myself in a department store.

To the left was a doorway. I walked through it and found myself in a room very similar to my dining room. The table had about four green purses on it. Two were open. The one at the back of the table had some cosmetics in it and other little things. I said, "That one I'm putting together for my sister," because G was standing at this near side of the table tucking a dollar bill back into an open purse that had paper money in it. I didn't know who that belonged to. The other two green purses were closed and under or behind the one that held money.

G picked up a copy of my latest novel, Black King Takes White Queen (there are two copies sitting on my dining room table right now so that's where that image came from, but no green purses!) I said, "You can have that."

G, still holding the book he had been flipping through, was facing me. He paused in flipping pages to raise his head until his eyes met mine. I noticed that he looked unshaven, scruffy, somewhat unkempt and his eyes looked sad. He replied, "I need a hug."

Before I could give him a hug I was woken up by Kelly who had gone into the main bathroom to start getting ready for work at 5:30AM (she had a class in East Hartford to get to for 8AM)

All day I have been haunted by that dream. For seven years I worked for G as a medical secretary and he never had a clue that I was a writer until about 5.5 months before he retired when I won second place for Blackstone's Menagerie in an annual Halloween Story contest. I brought in a manuscript copy printed off the website with the aware noted on it. He saw it lying on the table and read it- not his cup of tea but the look he gave me that day was memorable. He looked at me as if I had developed a new dimension. I was not that one dimensional secretary cleaning up after him, chasing him around the office for signatures and for answers to questions. Then I self published Medea and everyone in the office got a free copy to celebrate that first foray into the world of self publishing.

I shared a couple Irish themed stories (a ghost story and humorous ones) with him that he enjoyed, wrote him a riotous story about a medical secretary that is hauled downtown to be interrogated by the police after a patient she is talking to on the phone suddenly dies and his daughter accuses her of killing him. It combined my criminal justice/law enforcement background with my medical office background, plus was written by me, the now not so secret author in the office. He wrote on the front when he returned the manuscript "U R 2 Funny!", copying a line the secretary's office cohorts texts to her near the end of the story before the secretary heads home after being released.

So- because I have certain dreams that do not dissolve or fade away when I open my eyes in the morning I believe those dreams haunt me and stay with me for a reason.

Therefore, tonight, this blog is a hug to my friend, G. My obligation has been fulfilled.