BEFORE THE DREAM

In late August, my friend Peggy Callahan died.

THE DREAM

I am at a gathering. Linda MacDonald is here. She is wearing a quilted robe in a red and white pattern. People show off other pieces of fabric they have bought, and talk about them. It's as if we're all on a trip to a region with very interesting ethnic fabrics.

Someone (Linda?) asks me "Do you like this one better than that one?"

I say "I can't really rank them like that--I like both. Besides, I couldn't tell anyone 'Buy this one or that one for me,' because I wouldn't know what would be available at a given time."

Peggy is here too. But she is a cake, a cake in the form of a white rabbit which I am holding in my hands--about 1/4 the size of my cat, Carrot. Peggy has her own look also, sweet-faced and smiling. She has evidently been responding to treatment; she looks healthy. I tell her how amazed and happy I am to see her and how glad I am she is doing well.

Then I begin to eat Peggy--in her guise as a rabbit-shaped frosted cake. I start with her body, taking bites. She is still talking as I gnaw at her.

The hardest part is to take bites of her face. I kind of peck at her head and face, one bite at a time. It is so hard, and I feel repulsed by myself...

...but I keep going.

--Jenny Badger Sultan

EDITOR'S NOTE

The illustration is Jenny's, and shows a fusion of dream images from that period: the dream in context. She's cradling the rabbit-cake in the left foreground. Her title for the painting is "Circle of Life Renewing"--admittedly classier than "Peggy's Cake", and a sign that she did come to terms with Peggy's death. Painful though it is, to me the dream says "It takes time and effort to digest that a loved one is dead." Even two months later she's having trouble, er, swallowing it.

Why a rabbit-woman? Beats me. But I will say this: Jenny emailed me this for the Dreambank nearly a decade after she dreamt it, and within a day or so I received three more dreams about a rabbit-woman: Hop.

--Chris Wayan

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