Last night I awakened from a startling dream in which my late husband Jeffrey was palpably present, and speaking. Startling because this is the first time I’ve felt or seen him with me in dreamland for many years (he died in early 2003, see This Vast Being).

Jeff had many aspects to his character. Don’t we all? The one that attracted and held me for those 12 years was his large, vast self, his essence, peeking out through his various, and often conflicted, identities. Being a naturally suspicious and proud Leo/Scorpio, he only rarely allowed pesky me to see/feel that expansive, serene, magnanimous presence, that soul, what fueled both his massive, nearly overwhelming intelligence and his mostly Jewish neurotic foibles.

And here’s what that large self said, last night, or rather, what that self intoned:

“There will be a massive flow of people in coming years. Uprooted people, on the move.”

To my telepathic response, “Well, I know that, it’s happening already elsewhere,” he replied,

“In the United States.”

As I lay in bed, feeling my way back into the dream, I was reminded of why, soon after we moved to Bloomington Indiana from Jackson Wyoming for him to go to law school — and then he died of a heart attack (in early 2003, after one semester), during that first year alone I was feverishly buying blankets, temporary mattresses, and pillows. I kept seeing this house as full of people who needed a place to rest, people on the move.

Last night’s dream felt as if he was wanting to remind me, prepare me.