Meta-dream

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Last night I dreamed I had died and was reincarnated. I was the third child in a family of five children. We were in the candy distribution business. My older brothers hated sorting the candy as it came in, reboxing it for eventual sale. But I remembered being me (the now me, the me-writing-this-post me) and found it all new and fascinating.

Of course, no one else remembered their past lives. Whether that was because they had forgotten them or because they never had one, who can say. The only person I could talk to was not a person at all, but our golden lab who was, himself, a reincarnation of my beloved childhood dog. We knew each other from before. It was what kept us certain that our memories were real.

Everyone else treated it as an imaginative phase. And I couldn't help but wonder if I wouldn't be better off embracing my new life rather than spending so much effort, talking to a dog, trying to hold on to what was gone. Real, but gone.

As I aged into older childhood, my memory of being me grew confused. Like, I realized, a dream upon awaking.

And one day I resented being sent to sort boxes of candy and it was clear: whether I would embrace it or not, this new life was my life now.  Its demands and details were more than enough to fill my attention.

The me I was (the me I am now) was lost to time, another faded memory, an entire life forgotten in all but a few floating details that could have come from anywhere.

And my dog is dead. Or perhaps just too old to run when called. Who can tell. I have candy to sort. But someday I will leave this place and make my own life and I will never touch a box of candy ever, ever again.