Well, things do change. I have been struggling with the death and life of my youngest brother, Craig. The holidays were very hard. My husband was threatening the buy stock in the Kleenex company after he found me hiding "figuratively" in our room, surrounded by leaking tissues and wet eyes. He wanted to know why I had not been talking to the rest of my family. I didn't want to upset them, of course. Which he pointed out as completely ridiculous. We ALL are going through missing him and meeting the challenge in different ways. And it's a challenge. Except for the last few days. I had 3 dreams about him, 3 nights in a row, after not dreaming about him at all for 9 months. (He died in March and I had actually wondered why I had NOT dreamed about it, I am a pretty prolific dreamer and usually remember them in detail the next morning.) Suddenly, there he was, 3 appearances as a little boy, back when he was sweet and innocent and I could still talk to him. Parts of the dreams were scary, but not him, he was just there, a character in my nocturnal play. My last dream, he spoke to me though. Through the voices of my grandparents, through a radio. Hey, it's MY dream. But he told me that it was all okay. That he was fine, that it was okay for me to be happy, to miss him, to grieve. But to go and live in this world and be happy in it. Suddenly, the whole tone of my grief has changed. It was heavy, and demanding and harsh and dark with questions, and why's and anger. But, now, I feel that it's lighter. I will always miss him, I will cry some more, I will talk to people about it instead of running away. But I also will not be so buried and harsh in it any more. It's OK to feel all of these things. There is no hatred or fear in it any more for things that were and are still out of my control. All because of my grandparents, talking out of the radio. I won't even tell you about the penguin though. That was truly weird!!