The Dream

The Trampoline

No, this is not about living the dream.  This is about the dream that I had approximately one week after learning about the confusing death of a loved one.  While it may mean nothing to someone else, it opened up my eyes to many things, thus the need to document it here.

Many times when I dream it's like watching a short 3 minute movie, sometimes I just observe as if it's being played back later, other times it feels as though I'm living it.  This dream in particular is weird as I only remember snapshots and sort of thinking out loud moments.  In this dream, I was single and owned the home I grew up in as a kid.  The neighbors were not the neighbors from that home but of my Father's current home in a different city.  The home in the dream is in what I consider my hometown and the same place my recently deceased relative lived.  The story here involved a gigantic trampoline in the backyard.  This was no ordinary family sized trampoline, this thing was the size of a four stall garage.  According to the dream, it was the next door neighbor's and was installed on my property before I purchased the home.  For whatever reason I had never used the trampoline as it was theirs even though I had permission.  The day of this dream however, the trampoline and all signs of it were gone.  Nothing but beautiful green grass that had been freshly cut and it smelled wonderful.  I was having a conversation with someone but I don't know whom, I just know that I said  that I was going to have to ask the neighbor if the trampoline was coming back because it hadn't been there for sometime.  I told this person that I didn't want to do anything with the land until I knew for certain.  The person told me that the trampoline hadn't been there for years and they were certain that it was my yard to do anything I wished.  Sometime shortly after that, I woke up.

Now I'm sure that story doesn't mean much to anyone else but me.  However, for me it represents all sorts of things.  There are many parts of that story which line up with places and times of my past and trying to hold onto them.  What it basically means to me though is that for whatever reason, I have been not moving on for years, possibly since I moved away from that little town as a teenager.  I have always felt ties to that little town and the people in it even though I'm sure I have long since been forgotten.  All of my friends moved away shortly after I did and the school was demolished years ago.  What this dream makes clear to me is that it's okay to move on and enjoy what you have, that doesn't mean that you have to forget what was once there nor wait for it to come back.  The truth is that it never will.