Dreaming of Dead People

I spent the weekend dreaming of dead people. And then thinking about them since I'd brought them to my brain via my subconscious.

One was my dear friend Brenda, whom I have not written about much on my blog. She was an incredibly private person, and if I did mention her, I used B. and said only that we went to lunch or something. As a result, much of our relationship exists only in my mind now. We did not do things with other people, it mostly just the two of us running around together. I'm the one left to remember.

She isn't here now to ask me to take down a post, so I can write about her all I want. In my dream, she came to me and had written a bill she was going to present to Congress. It was up on a screen, with important points underlined and in blue (like a link), and she wanted my help getting the bill passed. I don't remember what the bill was about, but it was important.

This would have been unusual real life. She did not often ask for help. She occasionally sought my advice, but seldom my help. She was a martyr that way, constantly enduring whatever it was alone. She also talked to me as if I knew what she was talking about, when a lot of the time, I did not. She would mention people and expect me to know who they were, and frequently I was clueless because she'd never mentioned them before. We ran in foreign worlds, and they only crossed because we had formed a mutual bond over trying to protect the historic nature of our county seat. Then our mothers passed away the same year, and somehow that created this symbiotic relationship that lasted until she passed away in December 2021. At the end, we weren't as close as I would have liked. She had a progressive illness and refused to see me after Covid hit. I offered many times to visit, and she always refused. I probably should have "dropped in" anyway but I respected her boundaries.

Saturday, I roamed around the house doing chores and thinking about Brenda. I was trying to remember our relationship in the best of times, and how we lunched often and laughed together. She had a hearty, somewhat squeaky laugh and I could almost always get her to guffaw over something silly. The last time I saw her was at a lunch at Shakers; that was right before the pandemic hit. She looked thin and wan but she was still my pal. I "accidentally" snapped a picture of her on my iPhone that I did not erase. I'm sure if I posted a picture of her, she'd prefer one from before she became ill. But I will continue to respect her privacy and not do that.

Saturday night, I dreamed about Mr. Hopkins. He wanted me to come back to work for him. He was an older gentleman whom I had helped out with a book he was writing. He paid well, and I called him my "sugar daddy" because it was easy work that I enjoyed, as well as a nice bit of extra cash. He has also passed away.

Sunday, I thought about Mr. Hopkins, and how sometimes I enjoyed that work, and sometimes, when he was being rather cantankerous, I did not. He was quite old fashioned in his work habits (he was in his late 80s) and I had to take down his dictation by hand. I tried using a laptop but he didn't like the fact that there was something in between us besides a notebook. So, he would dictate, I would write it out in longhand (I have long forgotten how to do shorthand), and I also taped it so I wouldn't mess up anything. I have a hard time reading my own handwriting sometimes. His book was about the Pacific War during World War II, which was where he was supposed to serve. However, he had malaria and was sent back stateside and never served there. I think it haunted him, that he didn't play a bigger role in that war.

I edited the book as best I could; someone else had started the first half and I finished it up. I had grave concerns about the book because he took whole pages verbatim from the work of others - not primary sources, but secondary sources, books others have written. Because of this, there are multiple instances of names being spelled differently throughout the book. I pointed this out to him (both my concerns about plagiarism, which he waved off, and the different spellings), but he ignored my concerns. He said that his book publisher would fix any issues. He wasn't going to pay me to go back through it and try to change the names one way or the other, so I left it alone. What else could I do?

But his book publisher did not fix any issues that I could tell, and the book went out pretty much like I had edited it. And I had not edited it perfectly, and reviews reflect that, especially the part about the different spellings of names. I learned my lesson and after that when I came across any name in a book I edited (I have edited many), I wrote down every name of person or place, and then checked with the author if a different spelling came up. I let that go once, but never again.

It was strange for me to dream of these two people over the weekend. This was no anniversary weekend for either of them, that I am aware of. They were simply on my mind.

Bing AI created the image.