I was sitting on a bed in what looked like a dorm room. I was with Carolyn and Sara, two people I worked with during the summer of 1999. Carolyn was my boss. Sara was the best friend I had at work. In the dream, there didn't seem to be any real reason that the three of us were together. It seemed somewhat natural that we should all be there.
I told Sara I was really happy to see her, that I had been trying to contact her through e-mail but that I wasn't able to find her e-mail address through her college's website. She looked at me, surprised.
"Why did you want to talk to me so badly?" she asked.
"Because I heard about your sister's death," I said. "I read about it in the paper the other day, and then I found the story in People magazine from a couple months ago."
(Sara's sister killed herself in January of 2000. She had been struggling with anorexia prior to her death. I didn't find out about this until I read it in the Atlanta paper, in an article about Eating Disorders Awareness Week. It really hit me hard, because Sara's sister was my age and I remember how much Sara admired her and talked about her when we worked together. She sounded like someone I could have been good friends with.)
Sara looked at me oddly, as if she only had fuzzy memories of everything that had happened. "Oh. Right."
"I was just really sorry to hear about it," I said, and I kept going on about how reading the articles about Sara's family had really affected me, how I completely felt for her because my roommate struggled with anorexia, etc. Sara just kept looking around the room, as if she was bored with what I was saying.
"So, you're getting over Merrick's death?" I finally asked.
"Who's Merrick?" Sara said.
"Your sister," I said. "The one who died."
She said she was. I accepted that, and the three of us just sat there on the bed, not saying anything.
