Dream of the Dead...

When I was a little boy, my dear old grandmother used to have a saying which she would often repeat to me. She would say: "dream of the dead, and you'll hear of the living".

Until I came to live in Malaysia, I never really understood or believed in that saying. It was just another bit of folk wisdom my Nan probably got from her own grandmother. But recently, something happened to me that made me think perhaps my dear old Nan's folk wisdom might have had some value after all.

Sometime back in May or June last year, I had one of my lucid dreams. In these dreams, I experience things as if I am in real life, like mental television. I remember everything - words, sounds, colours, smells, the way someone's hair waves in the breeze - everything.

In this particular dream, I came home from work one day and my wife announced a surprise: my grandmother had come all the way from England to visit us here in Malaysia!

Now I must point out here that my dear old Nan passed away back in 1999 at the age of 91. So you can imagine my shock! But in the dream, there she was, very much alive and in our house, lying down on the couch recovering from the jet lag, and talking on my wife's mobile phone to my Mum back in England, just like that.

For my part, I was understandably shocked and stunned to think that an old lady like her had come on such a long journey to see us. Would she survive the tropical climate, I was thinking, in the dream. Why did she come over to Malaysia in the first place? Why was she still alive?

The logic of this dream, as in all dreams, was totally illogical. But that's not the point. The point is that I had dreamed of the dead. I had dreamed very powerfully of the dead. And to reinforce this power, my wife also had a dream about the dead around the same time as me. In her dream, she told me, her father, who passed away in 2000, was trying to talk to her.

My wife interpreted her dream as a reminder to pray for his soul, as the anniversary of his death was approaching. This is an aspect of Islamic culture that I have come to appreciate and understand. But why was my grandmother suddenly appearing in my dreams when she was not a Muslim?

A couple of weeks later, the answer came, as answers often do these days, via the Internet. I happened to be checking our email one day, and after I had removed all the hundreds of accumulated spam adverts, one particular message shouted out to me loud and clear like a clarion bell.

This message was from my wife's sister, Ohara. Ohara had lost touch with my wife's family after she split up with her Australian husband many years ago. All we knew about her was a vague address in Sydney, Australia and some enigmatic photos on the Internet. My wife and her other sister Anita had been trying unsuccessfully for months to contact Ohara by email and we even considered contacting the Australian police to see if they could trace her.

But the email in my mailbox told us that Ohara had at last come out of the cold. She had decided to contact us and let us know she was still alive and well. When I called my wife to the computer to read the message, she cried and she sobbed, and hugged me, and said syukur alhamdullilah (thank God). At that moment, of course, we both suddenly realised that my grandmother's old saying - dream of the dead and you'll hear of the living - had come true, big time.

So next time you have strange dreams about people who are no longer with us, don't dismiss them. Take hope from them. Cherish them. They might contain important messages. And you never know, you might just be in for a pleasant surprise about someone you love but thought you had lost.

Sweet dreams….