Marygrace's Dream about Joshua

My almost five-year-old son Joshua died on July 8, 2006. Ten days later, his older sister Marygrace, who was seven at the time, woke up in great excitement and ran downstairs to tell me a vivid dream that she had just had. Here's my approximation of Marygrace's words below.

Marygrace told me that she had a dream about Joshua last night.

She said she was asleep and Joshua came down from heaven with a little girl and he said, "Hi Marygrace! This is our little sister Ann!" (We had lost a baby to miscarriage before we had my daughter Joan.)

And then there were a whole bunch of other children there, about twenty. They all wanted to play with Marygrace and Joshua and Ann. They sat in a circle and they played Duck Duck Goose. "And it was so fun," Marygrace said, "because there were so many children. You had to run a lot."

Then, she said, they began to do exercises. The boys helped the boys do sit-ups and the girls helped the girls do sit-ups. "I had to have someone sit on my feet because I was the youngest," she said.

"Why were you doing sit-ups?" I asked.

"Because we were getting ready for a race, a very very long race. We had to do all sorts of exercises.

"We ran the race and it took a long long time. But then we won! We all won!

"And then we had a BIG party and everyone we know was there. Actually, everyone in the whole world was there. It was so much fun.

"And they had dress-up clothes and I wore a beautiful dress with a puff-out skirt, and I danced with a boy who was seven, who liked me. It was a beautiful dance."

I tried to imagine all of this. 

"Remember that dream," I told Marygrace.   "It's important.   Remember it."


By the way, soon after Marygrace told us this dream, we realized that the feast day of St. Ann is the same day as Joshua's birthday - July 26.