An odd dream

I dream a fair amount.  Sometimes I remember my dreams, but most of the time I don't -- or I remember only bits and pieces of them.  There are some dreams that I wish I could hold on to and store away every detail to retrieve whenever I want.  Other dreams . . . I can't forget them soon enough.

Last night I had a rather odd dream and, unfortunately, I don't remember too many of the details.  There were four people in the dream, but I can only recall three -- my mother, my daughter, E, and me.  I have no idea who the fourth person was, but I'm sure that there was someone else sort of hovering in the background.

E and I were sitting together and my mom was across from us, talking on a cell phone.  It was obvious from the pauses in the conversation that she was talking to someone.  One of us asked her who she was talking to and she said, "My mother."  My grandma, my mom's mother, has been dead for almost 25 years.

I'm positive that either E or I asked her how she could talk to grandma on her cell phone, but I don't think she answered that question.  All I can remember her saying is that she really needed to get a new battery for her phone, but she was afraid if she took the old battery out and replaced it with a new one, the phone would work differently and she would lose the ability to talk to her mother.     

When I woke up, one of my first thoughts was that I would like to have a phone like that.  I can remember years ago, when I was first married, my parents would go to Florida for a few weeks in February.  They stayed in a mobile home that some friends owned, but, because these friends didn't live in Florida year-round, they didn't bother with the expense to have a landline installed in their home.  This was also long enough ago that cell phones were a rarity.

Long distance phone calls were pretty expensive then as well, even with a calling card from one's long distance carrier, so my mom almost never called me while they were gone.  She could have gone to a phone booth (they still were plentiful then) but it was a hassle.  I would gladly have called her and paid for the charges, but there was no number where I could reach her.  At least one year, I must have had an emergency number because I had to call her and tell her that G's father had died very unexpectedly.  But usually I didn't have any way to get in touch with her.

I really missed being able to talk to her once or twice a week, and I remember the thought crossed my mind, "so this is what it will be like when my mother is dead and I can't pick up the phone and call her whenever I want.  This is what life will be like when I won't ever be able to talk to her again on this earth."  Knowing that I will never have a phone like the one my mother had in my dream, I hope I am able to hear my mother's voice, on the phone and in person, for a very long time.