The Ghosts I Keep Waking Up

Recently, two things returned to me:
Grief. And dreams.

I didn’t go looking for either.
They just showed up.
They always do.

It started with a text from a close friend.
She asked if I could watch her dog while she went to check on her son.
By the time the dog was back in my house, the worst had happened.

He had passed away.

That kind of moment doesn’t ask for attention.
It demands it.

The rest of the day, I was in semi-crisis mode — the same edge-of-something feeling I lived inside when my dad’s health was failing.
Hyper-alert. Not my grief, but close enough to trigger it.
Old wounds blinking awake like they’d just taken a nap.

When night came, I took melatonin and fell asleep.
And for the first time in what felt like weeks, I dreamed.
All night. Long. Vivid.

It started grounded. Real.
In the dream, I found people using my building’s rooftop patio as a place to sleep.
I went up there with my dogs, hoping to catch them. To intervene.
Then it turned.
Suddenly, I was a ghostbuster.

But we weren’t fighting ghosts.
We were trying to help them.

Some of the ghosts hung out at train stations.
If we announced the next departure, they’d dissolve — ready to move on.
Others needed permission to let loose, or to feel safe, or to come home one last time.
They weren’t evil.
They were stuck.
And so were we.

It stayed with me. Not because it made sense, but because it felt true.
And now I’m wondering:
Is there a connection between grief and dreams?

Because when grief is present, so are my dreams.
And dreams — more often than anything else — become story.

Is grief the flint that sparks my creative fire?

And if it is…
Can there be another?

Because I don’t want to keep holding grief like it’s a gift.
It’s exhausting.
I don’t want to keep losing people just to have more material.

I like to think I’m a loner, but I’m not.
Not really.
I like coffee shops. Background chatter. A full room.
Solitude starts to turn in on itself too quickly.

It’s fine, until it isn’t.
Until it’s 2AM and the silence becomes a mirror I don’t want to look into.

I don’t want to end up alone.

I want dreams without funerals.
Stories without shadows.

But maybe that’s not how it works.
Maybe the ghosts keep showing up not to haunt me,
but to remind me to announce the next train.