My sign from Heaven, finally

I think I have received the sign I was looking for, finally. From a couple posts back, I had mentioned that I really wanted a sign that my mom was ok in Heaven. I think I got it two nights ago.

Thanksgiving night, I had a dream about her again, my second one since she died. It started with her in her hospital bed in ICU right after she passed away, a very horrifying picture that I still can't believe I ever saw. Her eyes were only partly closed, her mouth was wide open with blood dried in the cracks of her lips. I laid my head on her chest to listen for a heart beat, to feel her lungs fill with air. Nothing. I placed her arms around me as I laid on her chest, so she and I could embrace one last time. The only thing that comforted me was the weight of her arms from all the edema, because it actually felt like she was hugging me back, but in reality, of course, we all know differently. This is where my dream began, in the room with her, rising from her chest and preparing to say my very final goodbye to her before I left the ICU unit. You know how in dreams you just understand what's going on, even if it's not actually said? Well, I knew that I was going to be given another chance to save her life, and all of the sudden, I was back to Monday, the day before I came up to the hospital to see her and find out she had an infection. I knew it was Monday, and I knew she had this awful infection that was the reason for her death, so I went to the hospital and begged every nurse I could find to put her on antibiotics. I kept saying, "She's really sick. She has an infection, I know it. It's the only way we can save her." And no one would listen to me. And Tuesday came, and I relived everything that had happened since I set foot in her bone marrow transplant room, all the way until Thursday morning when she died in ICU. I was so broken by this, feeling these emotions in my dream. Like I had failed, like I had let her down. I'm sure this paralleled well with my life the last 6 months, hoping and praying that there was something I could do to help, to change the situation in some way. But I couldn't. I couldn't do anything. None of us could. I understand that now.

I woke up from my dream, completely horrified and upset that I couldn't just have an enjoyable dream about my mom, that it had to be so mortifying, like digging the knife in the wound deeper and deeper. I got up, washed my face and brushed my teeth, and I as I looked at myself in the mirror, everything became very clear to me. I stopped what I was doing and stood there, almost in a trance. It occurred to me: This was my sign. My dream was my sign. She's ok. There was nothing any of us could have done no matter how many chances we were given. It wasn't a game show-there were no do-overs. That was it. It happened the way it was supposed to. And she was ok.

Later that day, I told Aunt Janny about my dream. I told her that it meant that there was nothing we could do to fix it. I could see her eyes fill with tears, and she said, "Sometimes I just think that things happen the way they are supposed to." I agreed, and although that reason is often hard to understand or to discover. Sometimes it just is what it is. I nodded my head and said, "There's no way Aunt Polly could be alone. She wouldn't have been able to stand being away from you guys. She had you all for so long, and she never liked to be alone, ever." Aunt Janny nodded, knowing that Aunt Polly loved to be surrounded by company, right until her dying breath. Even during the last days of her life, when she would wake up and gain consciousness, she would look around the room to see who was with her. It was true. Aunt Polly needed a sister. She chose my mom.

Maybe she already knew long before any of us ever did who was going to be her companion in Heaven.