what dreams may come

A dream.
My mother came to me.
She was crying.
She didn't speak.
Just cried.
In the dream I had no awareness that she had died ten months ago.
And she just kept crying.
Next minute she was gone and Tom Bermingham was standing there.
He is from a few miles outside my home town and is more recently deceased.
I barely knew him.
Maybe talked to him four or five times in my life.
In the dream I realized he had died a few months ago.
He seemed dapper and vibrant in a grey suit. His appearance was that of a particularly energetic old man.
I was quite pleased at the chance to interrogate him about the afterlife.
"You died," I began.
"Yes," he said.
"Is heaven real?" I enquired.
"It is," said he.
"Is Jesus real?" I pressed.
"He is," answered Tom Bermingham and then continued in colloquial Irelandese, "Sure haven't I just been talking to him! Sure amn't I talking to him every day!"
"Can you tell me anything else?" I pleaded.
"Not at the moment," said he.
I woke up.
I thought about the Mammy crying.
What on earth was going on?
I had no clear feeling that the dream was anything other than the workings of my imagination.
Maybe the subconscious yanking my chain.
Of course I've heard tales about people getting visits from dead relatives in order to give them some reassurance or comfort or advice.
Or according to a story told by the news reader Anne Doyle whose brother claimed to have met his dead mother walking down the fields, as a kind of preparation for something tough, in this case the brother's death by cancer.
In truth I very quickly knew what mine might mean, whether real or imagined.
She was crying about my growing estrangement from various family members.
"Ah Mammy why couldn't you have given me a bit of a sign if this is anything more than a dream?" I groaned out loud.
And in the recesses of my imagination I heard: "Didn't I bring Tom Bermingham!"