She came to visit me quite a few months after she had died.
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During the last five years of my paternal grandmother’s life, I developed a close relationship with my abuela (grandmother) Teresa. I actually didn’t like her too much when I was a young child because she was loud, bossy, had a bad temper and she was not affectionate. In addition, she had a lot to compete with because I was my maternal grandmother’s godson and my abuelita (grandma) Carmen, was one of the dearest persons in my life back then. But in my late teens, I was living in Madrid, and I would visit my grandmother Teresa almost every Sunday. Grandma Carmen lived in Lisbon and I just didn’t have the chance to see her that often anymore. We also had lived abroad for many years, and time and distance had driven us apart.
On weekends, grandmother Teresa would always make flan and/or tortilla de patatas (Iberian potato omelette). She would boast that no one could make those as good as her and she did make a mean flan of “twelve egss” she would say. She loved feeding her grandchildren on Sundays snacks and tapas of all kinds. I would sit down at her couch, enjoy a cigarrette with a beer, and listen to stories of her life and the Spanish civil war. I had become her favorite grandson, maybe because I reminded her of my paternal grandfather. I couldn’t really understand why back then, since I didn’t like myself too much, but I did enjoy her company. I also knew she wanted her grandsons to visit her because she knew she was getting old, and that she was quickly approaching her end. I felt she was lonely, and I made it a point to visit her as much as I could on weekends.
In my dream, I was at a church hall, sitting at a small table, as if I were waiting for food to be served. Grandmother Teresa came and spoke very clearly to me. She stated she had come to tell me that I should not be scared of death and dying; that she knew this was something I feared. She made me understand that she had made this effort to visit me so she could give me this message. I did undertand what she had come to tell me, although I didn’t quite fully realize why at that moment. I then saw that she was serving food at this Church Hall, where I found mysefl in my dream, and that she worked as a waitress there. When I woke up I said to myself something that I knew was true as life itself: “My grandmother just came to speak to me in my dreams!” I said it out loud several times because I was so surprised.
Years later a friend of mine was studying metaphysics and said one of the exercises she was doing was to intepret dreams. She asked me to tell her any dream that I had, so she could explain it. I remembered this very real dream and told her about it. She said that my grandmother was now at a spiritual place (the church) and that according to metaphysics, food means knowledge in the world of dreams. Grandmother Teresa had come from a spiritual place, where she was residing now, to give me a message.
I do still have a tremendous fear of dying. However, when I think of this experience, it helps me overcome it.
Copyright © 2019 Jorge Luis Carbajosa
El descampado 
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