An award-winning journalist, Katie has written for Chicago Health since 2016 and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief.
Sleeping over at my grandparents’ house one night when I was 9, I had a horrible dream. The sleepovers always went the same way: My grandma would read to me and stay until I fell asleep. A nightlight glowed in the room, and I felt comforted knowing my grandparents were a few steps across the hall.
But on this particular night, I dreamt that my grandma died.
I woke up the next morning shaken, trying not to cry. My grandma knew something was wrong. Reluctantly, I told her about the dream. I was scared to put the image of her own death in her mind — and scared of what it might mean.
“Oh, Katie. That’s the best thing you could’ve told me,” she said with a huge smile.
I was confused. “Why?”
“When you dream that someone dies, it means they’re going to live a long, long life,” she said.
I don’t know if my grandma was just trying to comfort me, but it worked. And as I write this three decades later, my grandma just celebrated her 96th birthday. By her interpretation, my dream came true.
When we saw each other a few weeks ago, we spoke again about dreams. She told me that my grandpa, who died more than a decade ago, has been visiting her in hers.
“I have him in my dreams sometimes, too,” I said, surprised at my own excitement. “But he never talks.”
She shook her head. “They never do.”
Again, her response confused me. “Who?”
“The ones who have gone,” she said simply. “They never speak, but they’re letting us know they’re here.”
I thought through the dreams I could remember. Other people speak in them, but the people who’ve died never seem to. I tried not to think about what it would be like to only see my grandma that way.
Instead, I called my brother to ask him how he felt about our grandma turning 96. “I think about this a lot,” he said. “She’s our connection to the people who were her elders — to someone who was 90 during the time of her youth.”
She’s our living link to the past — the past of our youth, of the years before we were born, of people who lived and died before we existed.
This issue, we talk to people from my grandma’s generation, who have earned the centenarian title. They talk about how their pasts have shaped their lives, what they see as the secrets to a long life, and what it all might mean. A lot can happen in a century of life. And approximately one-third of it happens in our dreams.
Katie Scarlett Brandt
Editor-in-Chief
katieb@chicagohealthonline.com
P.S. To my grandma, who reads Caregiving, I love you! Happy 96th!
