Would these nightmares matter in the afterlife?

Who wakes me some nights has been a beloved departed. Yes, I’ve been having nightmares, but not the usual kind—not from ghosts or ghouls that remain just phantoms for me. 

Oh, except for two, the first of which I have no memory because it happened in early childhood—apparently, he appeared to play with me, “that old man in a life-size portrait hanging above the main door,” —my paternal grandfather, years dead before my birth, his only son’s first child.

A decade later, his wife, then on death throes in a daughter’s home in Pasay City, flew “out of her body” to see the second grandchild, my sister. The incident involved a mirror suddenly crashing in our bedroom where the baby’s high fever broke after a crying jag, while in faraway Pasay, my grandmother slipped into a momentary coma and, on waking, claimed she had seen the baby, then she died.

Quite fair to presume then that, even as spirits, one’s strong desire to be present, like my grandparents, could happen. In contrast, a dream conjures up not an obvious reality, but a deeper one hidden by layers of sorrow, regrets and memories.

Take my father’s baffling return in a dream. He had run away, supposedly, but I found him at Philippine Rabbit’s Avenida terminal, secluded in a dark corner, his once-proud mien unrecognizably sad and meek, clutching a portfolio of his writings (he used to ride Rabbit on his visits when his work in Manila separated us as a family in Ilocos).

I urged him to come back home, but he had demurred, stating he’s good. Did I search for him hankering forgiveness for the times I had rebelled? Did he let go of me or us, his family, though sadly? With assumed answers, I had felt unburdened, sobbing when wakened.

What’s this about the dead revealing their sadness? In my last dream of Felix—he and I still engaged and talking in a portico at Casa Manila—he shed tears as he proposed a “cooling off” (we had met in Intramuros and held our small wedding party at Casa Manila). I begged him for a reason, but he bid me goodbye, which devastated me long after waking up—I often forgot he had died for some time; he hasn’t returned since.

My mother, even in death, remained who I knew. In my dreams, she merely flitted around the edges of casual daily scenes, a feeling of her just being there. But once I sniffed her scent, which woke me in disbelief that she’s been gone for years.

I’d agree if you tell me that these dreams sound feeble as nightmares—true because my nightmares, in truth, are waking horrors regarding their resting place, especially those of my grandparents. Buried at her daughter’s family grave at the South Cemetery, my grandmother’s spirit must be languishing, instead of being at peace with her husband in the town cemetery of Bacarra. But then again, since all of us heirs have abandoned our ancestral town, who would care about my grandfather’s tomb?

No telling our future, really. Like it had seemed normal for my parents to be buried at the North Cemetery in my husband’s six-generation mausoleum. The present generation knew them, but what about those of distant futures? And so, before I left to immigrate, I moved their remains to a crypt at Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage Parish, which Felix designed at Queensrow Subdivision in Molino, Cavite.

Felix, too, by now should be in his own crypt as the church’s architect. I attempted a transfer after the prescribed five years after burial, but with his remains still intact, I had him put back in the mausoleum, heeding his own beloved dead’s disapproval. But I had reserved a crypt for me and my sister, which would mean he and I would be apart—indeed, do these nightmares matter in the afterlife?