Reminiscent Dream

Today was a trouble-shooting day. I ordered a cell phone holder for the car. It arrived missing a little part. I couldn't reach the company, so I started looking through all the little parts we've collected over the years and found a little clamp that did just the trick. I'll still get in touch with the company, but it is usable in the meantime.

I took Microsoft up on their free Windows 10 upgrade in early August, but missed the 30-day roll-back 'window' if something didn't work right. We'll, as you know, other things happened. So I chatted with a MS tech, explained my situation and that I had to restart my laptop about 8 – 10 times before I would get the Start menu and even then some inherent apps would not work. He said they normally charge $99 (what a number, right?) for fixing it but he would do it for free. He also said that this was a common problem people are having with the upgrade. So it was actually relaxing relinquishing control of the computer and just sit back and watch what he was doing. I have been perusing the Windows forums and knew of the approach he was using. He actually had to create a whole new profile and copy everything from my profile over then delete mine. It took him about an hour and a half. It would have taken me a lot longer. My desktop has been running fine on the other hand. But I lost the ability of what Windows now calls the 'homegroup,' in other words, networking my computers. Back I went to sift through questions and solutions online today. Bingo! Found it. Turn off the computers. Set up the homegroup from the laptop, it then generates a password, start up the desktop, enter the password, and Viola! Done!

I still haven't been able to get a complete 8 hours sleep at night. Since I was a teenager, that always seemed to be the magic number for my ability to function properly. So after I fixed the homegroup problem and put some more stuff away left from moving all the furniture around the other day and I felt beat. Odin, Cassie and I laid down for an hour-long nap.

I fell right to sleep. I had the strangest dream though. It's the first time I can remember dreaming about Charley since he's left. It felt real also. Like all dreams, there's that surreal quality, but lately that has been the major theme even in my waking hours. So, I'm telling Charley that even though he was growing older I am not going to mourn him until he was gone. If I did so, it would waste time we had together now. We hugged and cuddled. Then the surreality oozed back into the dream and I did some odd stuff around the property that actually never has happened and really didn't understand what was happening. Then I woke up.

Charley has always been quite capable, but the last few years, his physical strength had declined (even though he was really quite strong) and he complained about the losses of what he physically could have done in the past. We all do that. As we age, the vessel which holds our minds begins to show cracks and weaken. We had a conversation one time about my responses to his complaints. Since I am a troubleshooter, I would come up with steps we could take to help the situation. He said that didn't make him feel better that instead it made him feel like I was denying his ailments by explaining them away. Which he was right; I admitted it at the time. It was my defense to not acknowledging that he was slowing walking away and would eventually leave me.

I tried not to dwell on this aspect of him disappearing. I knew, like in my nap-time dream today, that worrying about the inevitable would just waste the precious time we had left. So we were traveling, walking, hiking as much as we could while we could still do it together. If there is one thing, I am grateful for it's that he went so quick. This has been a tremendous shock and weight of the sadness is immense for me, but I'm happy for him. We watched four other people in our lives whose illness lingered and they just dwindled to nothingness over years before leaving this world. That type of death is even scarier. Charley left while packing for our adventure to Burning Man. We'd made at least 7 trips this year in the Casita, including the grand road-trip on the Alaskan highway for two-and-a-half months this summer.

Dreams, my mind working in the dark to make sense of my experiences.