One last hug?

BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - smack!

*silence, for nine minutes*

I hate my alarm clock.

One morning last week I hit the snooze button and immediately fell back to sleep. Sometimes when this happens I dream in that nine minute span until it goes off again. This was one of those times.

What I wouldn't give to hold
Aimee again...

I walk up to a doorway inside a house I do not recognize, but in which I seem to be perfectly at ease. As I get to the doorway I see Aimee sitting on a coach. There is either nothing else in the room, or I just don't see it. I just see Aimee and the couch. Aimee is sitting there, feet pulled up under her, smiling at me, not saying anything. In that moment I know that Aimee is dead, but it's as if she came for one purpose - to let me hold her one last time. I sense myself asking her if that's why she's there, although I do not hear myself speak, and I sense her answer in the affirmative, although she doesn't say a word. I walk to the couch, and sit down next to her, and wrap my arms around her. She returns the embrace. I know that I have to try and burn this into my memory, that this is my last chance to feel this, and even as I think this I also know that it's pointless because this isn't actually Aimee but just a dream, and that I'm not actually feeling HER, just my own fading memory of what holding her felt like. But that doesn't keep me from holding her and wishing I really could feel her, and even if this is just a shadow of reaility, one I'm in for a few brief seconds, I-

BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - smack!

*silence, for nine more minutes*

I hate my alarm clock


PS. It should be noted that I don't believe Aimee actually came to visit me in that dream. I had no real sense of her presence, just my own memory of her. I don't know if people ever visit us from the dead. I tend to believe they do not, but I also won't tell others who are convinced that they've experienced such visitations that they're wrong. Who am I to say for sure? In any event, I'm sure that's not what happened here. It was just a dream.