I dream I’ve just come up
a steep sand dune

when I see her on the beach
tossing a multicolored ball

back and forth with friends.
My heart sings!

I walk along the water’s edge
and there she is again.

I go to her and ask,
How did you survive?

She smiles and
shakes her head.

Tears of joy—
It’s true, she’s still alive!

I find her on the beach again,
fall to my knees,

my arms around her legs.
Is it really true, my dear?

She looks down at me and
tells me with her eyes

No one who is loved
ever really dies.

Note:
A cop and a priest knocked on our door just past dawn on a cold December morning to tell us our daughter Gretchen had died in a fire. Like most people presented with such a shock, I had trouble accepting that it could be true. My 21-year-old daughter suddenly dead? How can this be?
The dream described in this poem seems to have been a gentle way of telling me that it was true. She died. But the look in her eyes gave me something to ease the pain of that awful fact..