another dream of laoye

Happened last night

Dreamed we were back at Winston Castle in highschool.

It was the summer of 2010 when Grandma had gone back to Guangzhou on her own and it was just Laoye, my parents and I at home.

I found Laoye snoozing on the floor beside moms bed on a rollout Ikea mattress of sorts. They were chatting and I walked in to talk with them. Laoye asked me to help him smooth out the mattress, so I ended up pulling it out from under him and re-sheeting the bed.

Later he went into the bathroom to shower. I went in to pee and he asked me to help him again, he forgot to take off his pants properly. I took the wet garment from him and put it in the laundry hamper.

None of this was weird and now that I'm awake again, it felt... Nice. It was nice to see and chat with him and do things for him. As soon as we woke up I thought like... "That's Chinese love for ya. Acts of Service even in a dream."

Dream about Lao Ye and Gu Nainai

April 14 2022 - 

Soph here.

Woke up in tears because I had a dream about my family.

It started with my mom talking to Gu Nainai, Lao Ye’s older sister, in a version of our house in Guangzhou. Gu Nainai said “Now that my younger brother has gone to join my older brother, I know I’m the last one left, and I know it might be my time to go soon.” It’s hard to remember what she said because the dream replicated her Henanese accent very well, but hearing what she said felt really alarming.

My mom laughed nervously and said “Aunt, don’t say that, how do you know your younger brother has gone?”

Gu Nainai insisted, “I keep dreaming about him! He keeps visiting me. The children (Sophia’s aunts and uncles, Gu Nainai’s kids) are weeping and trying to hide it from me. I can tell.”

They talked a little more as I sat down at the breakfast table. Mom sat beside me, Grandma sat diagonally across from me. I had a clear view of the front door. The lighting in this dream was a pale, fresh green, like it was spring. Even the drapes were a pale green fluttering in the wind.

Lao Ye came through the front door, cheerfully bobbing his head. He loudly announced, “You guys decorated the door so well, I found my way home!” and came to sit down at the table in front of me. I stared at him and could tell Mom was looking at me funny; I was the only person who could see him. He looked approximately a few years younger, like before the cancer treatment in 2018.

The dream is slipping from me now. He said a bunch of things and I answered and mom just kept looking at me weird. But the one thing I remember him distinctly saying:

“丫丫，谁说你不幸福?” (Yaya, who says you’re not fortunate/happy?)  

And he reached over to stroke my shoulder.

I started to cry in the dream. I told him it’s not that I don’t think I’m misfortunate, it’s not that I’m really unhappy. I just miss him. I feel like he got stolen from me. I felt he had more years to go, and I want him at my wedding, and now he can’t come.  

Woke up crying, ended up sobbing in bed for a bit because the dream felt so real.

Yeye at the mall

April 7 2022

Last night I had a dream about yeye.  I was just wandering a mall and happened upon him shopping with a friend I don’t recognize, also an old grandpa.  I beelined for Yeye and gave him a hug; I was smaller, maybe 8 years old again, and he snuggled me under his chin.

Lao Ye in the village

Mar 28 2022

I dreamed about Lao Ye last night, just woke up at 7:46

Dreamed I got dropped off some port town in old China. Felt like the 1940s. I wasn't me. There were two little boys maybe four years old playing outside and the man escorting me, some sort of shopkeep, picked one up, called him Shi Wudu, and took him home. 

I went inside of the small Chinese doorway and it was a domicile. To my right was a bedroom and further in was a kitchen, it all looked like that area in Meizhou I can still distantly recollect from 2000. Night fell. There was violence and unrest brewing. We had to run because I knew the conflict was going to arrive, it felt like nationalists VS communist revolution in China but details unclear. 

I met my aunts at the door. It was Yan and Zhilan from Guangzhou, both of them my Lao Ye's nieces-in-law. Yan was by the outside door fretting about what to do with Lao Ye who was in poor health. We all had to run today and none of us knew what to do. Zhilan came with me into his bedroom and found him asleep under the covers. We were deciding on euthanizing him somehow, but we fretted over what to do. When we got to his side, he woke up and Zhilan collapsed in tears by the side of the bed. I sat by the bed and stroked his stubbly cheek and he woke up. 

"Yaya, what's happening?" he asked me in Mandarin. 丫丫，怎么了？

"I'm sorry, Lao Ye," I whispered in a language that felt odd, like the words were not quite Chinese but the meaning was clear in my head in English. "They're coming to burn this house down and we don't know how to take you with us. We didn't mean to wake you. I don't know what to do, I want to ask you how you'd like to die."

Lao ye got up and I noticed then that he had neither arms nor legs in this dream, just smooth stumps. I wasn't even shocked, it seemed to make sense in the logic of the dream and also a part of me thinks it's because we just cremated him. I'm not taking to the idea of cremation well, so I'm thinking of him in bits and pieces. He climbed off the bed, about as tall as my torso, talking all the while. "I see. Don't worry. Follow me and I'll show you what to do." 是吗？别担心，跟着我来

On his stumps he walked to the closet to the left and put on a hat. He then walked confidently to the front door, seeing people in the streets running en masse in carts and on feet. He then shut the metal door, repeating, 可以可以，不用想了，（it's okay don't think about it) and I went to the kitchen understanding he intended to stay here and see it through. 

I hear him and Zhilan arguing in the bedroom before she leaves, unable to convince him. I am in the kitchen and there is a bed there too for some reason. I decide to stay. 

Lao Ye and I spent time together in quiet. He had to sleep a lot. He slept on the bed and I was curled up under his armpit, back nestled against his torso. I heard knocking on the metal door, but instead of danger, the same man who escorted me arrived with his wife, two children, and what looked like an impressive cart with horses outside. He came in intending to rescue my Lao ye and me. Lao ye got up, greeted the man loudly with laughs, while I tried to get tea and watermelon together to serve our guests. 

The dream ends when the wife of the man, who felt vaguely like yet another aunt of mine, scolded Lao ye for hanging a watermelon sliced up as decoration. He protested that it was going bad but it looked nice on the wall, and the aunt shot back that it would attract flies! And she dumped the mushy thing into a metal bin as my Lao ye sheepishly shrugged.

Luna, revived

Had an intense dream last night that was also very bittersweet.

So Luna, our rabbit, died in 2019 of cancer.  She was an 8-year-old, almost 9 year old, rabbit, and ever since, I periodically dream about her.

Last night's dream, Simon and I were in Ottawa for some reason.  We were deciding on getting a ferret and I was doing research on it on my phone. I was thinking about how I need to ferret-proof my house if I want one, and then when I glanced over, I saw Luna as a small bunny, much like when we first got her. She was prancing around the house and not really eating, but if I crouched down, she came to me very naturally.

I picked her up and she felt just like she did as a bunny, all soft and fluffy and light.  I remember squishing her little belly, petting her between the ears, massaging her cheeks.  Every time I put her down she'd just happily go on her way.  We also had a white kitten that was playing with her, big blue doll eyes and very gentle.

I was the only person in the dream who could see Luna.  I kept asking people if they could see her and the looks and answers were very concerned "no"s.  However, since the kitten could see her too, any time they were playing together and the kitten was lying on top of her, it looked like the kitten was floating in midair.  Simon in the dream confirmed this incredulously.

At this point in the dream, I could hear people around me talking worriedly about an invasion, that we needed to leave Ottawa and go back to Toronto.  We went around our house packing up, wondering if the invasion would hit or not with some intense anxiety.

I seem to have left the house to go to some sort of theatre stage, and there, I met Luna and the kitten again - except this time, they had transformed into idol girls! LOL.  Luna was a black girl with giant fluffy black hair, black eyeliner, a button nose, and a badass attitude.  She had a sharp swath of white hair underneath so it felt like she had inverted colours.  The kitten had somehow transformed into this pink-haired, space-bunned little pastel punk girl.  They were putting on a show and I could tell they were having fun. 

At some point we walked through the "idol house" where they were living with other idol girls.  Cash was there as the house mother giving us a walk-through.  Then I woke up.

All-in-all, a very interesting dream!

4 Part dream of horrors

April 2022 

Just woke up from this, and it happened in several chunks - four significant parts.

Part One

I was in some sort of forest and I found a tunnel in the ground. It went down diagonally and got thinner and thinner. There was some sort of operatic choir that got louder and more screamy as I went. And when I hit the end, I found some sort of plastic window. There was a child on the other side (who vaguely looked like Julian), below me, pointing at me shouting "There's a man in the ceiling!" and I realized I was behind the fluorescent light panel of his home in the ceiling.  The operatic music snuffed out like a candle.

For some reason I think I was Dane Cook?? Because I leaned against this plastic panel and I talked to the child.  The horror vibe of this part of the dream faded completely as I became the weird kid's counsellor in his basement ceiling lol.

Then I woke up to pee and went back to bed, where the other parts of the dream manifested.

Part Two

I was in highschool again.  I was staying late for some sort of project and had called my mom to let her know that I'd be home late.  I must've stayed for repertoire practice or some sort of event, I don't remember anymore.  At around 9:38PM, which I saw on the oven, Emily's parents ended up driving me home to some sort of amalgamated house between 8 Hyacinth and 125 Winston Castle.

I found Lao Ye in the kitchen.  He lit up seeing me, asked me if I wanted my dinner.  I went straight up to him and hugged him tight.  Even in the dream I knew he was dead, but the visceral act of hugging him... like, I could smell him, he was the right height, he looked like he did in his 70s instead of 90.  He tried to pull away with a laugh at some point to heat up my dinner but I actually grabbed him tighter and told him in Mandarin, "No, not yet, just a bit more."

Part Three

I stepped outside of my house and walked down the street.  Somehow I ended up at the facade of a building that looks like my university's library.  When I went inside, it turned out to be some sort of ghetto mall with the first store being an art/studio space.  When we walked inside, we were very wary.  Girly switched in to announce that we have DID and the circle of artists we were trying to befriend stared at us like we were crazy.  I think in hindsight she did it to intimidate people, or to let them know we were potentially dangerous so they don't fuck with us.

I stepped into one stall and there was a woman in there waiting for me, a lovely older black auntie who had a little black girl toddler.  The auntie asked me if I was ready to take the child home, and when I looked at the little girl I realize she was my daughter (somehow).  I had a baby boy in my arms too so I had two children attached to me.  I hurried with the children back to where my house was, except this time, it was somehow Cash's house.  Cash's mother and sister, Geneva, were waiting for me in one of the bedrooms in a long hallway of sparse white drywall.  The rooms were crowded with clothes, furniture, etc.  Cash's mother told me yes, I can stay there, I could stay in Cash's room, but I had to figure out how to feed the babies.  

We sat for a while in Cash's mom's bedroom with the two children.  The little baby boy was cheerful and giggly and burpy.  The little toddler girl was a bit withdrawn, but she offered me lots of shy smiles when I stroked her cheek and tidied her hair, which was in little plastic beaded ponytails.  She was very attached to me once I took her.  I gave her lots of kisses and she called me mommy.

Part Four

Suddenly the same thugs from the mall and art gallery came in, and it was implied that they wanted my children.  Girly switched in and grabbed a knife and very much started to stab a table.  Everyone hesitated and shifted backwards.  That point, Cash's mom decided to take us elsewhere to get rid of the drama.

She took us to the end of the hallway where the way to get to the third floor was a strange series of white chairs and ladders descending from the ceiling.  We had to climb up to get to the room, and instantly when we went in, I collapsed on the bed and cried thinking about what I could do.  I was debating putting up the little baby boy for adoption, as babies could be adopted easier, and I would keep the toddler because she deserved to be taken care of.

Then I woke up.  What a GODDAMN ride!

My grandfathers died.

My paternal grandfather died on February 6th at home in his sleep.  My maternal grandfather's health took a sudden nosedive with a gall bladder infection flare-up on the 7th, and he was ferried to the ICU where he died on the 10th.

I have been dreaming a lot about them since.