A Message. Perhaps.

My friend's mother just died. I know what that feels like. It is a sadness so deep that it is impossible to articulate it.

I wrote a letter to my friend, telling her that I know her grief and that I was available to talk to if she needed. When my mom died, 24 years ago, I needed. I told her that I was praying for her and that her mother was healed and in the loving and merciful arms of God. I believe in God. I more than believe. I know. And I hope that what I told her is true. I hope that her mother had a relationship with God.

But I also felt compelled to tell her that my mother "came to me" in dreams. Because that it

also true. And if it wasn't her, it sure felt like it. The idea of this is not biblical per se, but the bible does say that we shall "dream dreams". It probably doesn't mean what my experience was, but my mom talked to me from the perspective of having passed. Maybe God lets us dream creatively of our loved ones so that we can find comfort. I don't know.

A couple of years ago, I attended a convention in Vegas with one of the editors of the magazine I worked for. We were having dinner at TAO at the Venetian and as noisy as it was, we started talking of personal and spiritual experiences. Her sister in law had died a few years prior in terrible car accident. She was very young when she died. This was still an extremely painful experience for her and her husband. But she told me that her sister in law had come to her in a dream. It was a very vivid dream and their conversation was a happy one. Towad the end of the dream, her sister in law told her that this was a "real" visit. She replied: "But you are dead and this is a dream". Her sister in law said "Yes, we can come in dreams". I don't know if it is real but this was my editor's experience and I liked this story.

The first dream I had of my mom was only 2 or 3 nights after she died. (My mother had died of a heart attack and it was completely unexpected.) In the dream, I found her in a tiny outdoor cafe, surrounded by trees, completely shaded and we sat at a little wrought iron cafe table. I told her how relieved and thankful I was to see her. She seemed a bit disoriented but generally in good spirits. I asked her how heaven was. She listed off a number of very notable historical figures including Disraeli, FDR and Picasso and said how excited she was to meet them but that she was disappointed because all they wanted to do was watch TV. She said she was a little bored. (Hey, its a dream.) Then I told her that her mother was inconsolable and I asked her if she could tell me anything that would convince my grandmother that there was a heaven and that she was okay - something only my grandmother would know. My mother thought for a minute and said: "Tell her "doodlebug" and "doodleberry".

When I woke up I remembered the dream vividly and thought it was very odd. "Doodlebug" and "doodleberry" were bizarre words to have come up. They had no meaning at all. But I decided to ask my grandmother.

About a month later, Barry and I visited my grandmother in Tucson and I told her about the dream and asked her if the words meant anything to her at all. They did not. So much for the "message". Dreams are crazy.

After a year of serious grieving, my mother "came to me" for the last time. I was in Las Vegas,

of all places and I was napping in the hotel room at Caesar's Palace. In the dream, I was in an empty high rise and I was chasing the image of my mother, but she kept getting away from me - she'd close a door behind her or get into an elevator or just round a corner. Finally I caught her and we sat together on a bench in front of a window and I cried and cried and told her that I couldn't stand it and that I needed her and that I didn't know what I was going to do. She was very emotionally detached in this dream. She wouldn't engage with me in it. She just sat next to me and patted my hand and told me I would be fine and that she could not come back and that I had to go on. And that is the only thing that happened for the remainder of the dream. When I woke up I was very sad. And I never dreamed of her like that again.

Then, about 10 years later, when my grandmother was in an assisted living home and had alzheimers, my auntie Barbara sent me a number of letters my grandmother had saved. They were written by my mother and sent to her when she was pregnant with me and living in a little apartment with my dad and sister in Downey. Reading them was a joyful experience. I saw my mother in a new and different light - as a very young mother - a girl really - prattling on about her husband and her baby and the electric bill and the neighbors - and me. These letters continued after my birth and she told her mother all about me. I was very smart. I was very fat. I was very demanding.

And here's the surprise. I was a "little doodlebug".

I don't know what to make of it. But this is a true story.