At the risk of sounding maudlin, I'm going to post my thoughts on this matter...

My brother Jamie had a messy divorce from his ex-wife, Cynthia, some years ago. Because of the residual bitterness of the post-breakup fallout, we have been unable to see their daughter, Gracie, for the past several years. She's six now--I haven't seen her since she was two. However, this past summer, I called Cynthia and asked her if I could meet her somewhere, maybe for coffee, and get to see Gracie and her daughter Cassidy (she was my stepniece--we became close while Jamie and Cynthia were married). She agreed, but due to the fact that I called her near the beginning of school and how busy she was, we're putting it off until a later date--maybe Fall Break or even Winter vacation.

However...last night...I had this dream. (In case your warning bells aren't going off by now--they should be. You've been warned.) Instead of just Gracie and Cassidy, there were, I think, four girls, all of them Jamie's daughters. They were happy and lighthearted and sweet, and all of them were glad to see me. I found myself crying at one point, not only because I was finally meeting them, but because they brought such light into my life.

The thing is--what I'm thinking--perhaps they weren't just facsimilies of people I want to see...perhaps they were concrete representations of abstract things that I've been missing for so long. Hope. Laughter--true laughter at the comedy that is life. Joy. Happiness. Perhaps they came to bring me a message of deliverance, that there will be release at some point. I'd like to think that the nieces in my dream were there to say, "We've been away a long time...but this time, we're here for good."