Had a dream about my mom last night. But it was really weird. I was somehow in space and she was an astronaut and she was traversing warp holes and I was like “mom, isn’t that scary?” and she seemed unphased by that.
My mom passed in 2021 for reference.
I do, but they are different from my waking memories of them. I tend to remember the bad while awake and the good while asleep regardless of my overall feelings for a person.
For instance, the majority of my memories with my grandma were great ones, but the ones that surface while I’m awake are two single instances when she made comments about our gay uncle-in-law and interracial marriages. When she is in my dreams, it is never in a negative context. Maybe it’s because these memories were so at odds with the rest of my experiences of her and the fact that they always pop up when I think of her bothers me.
The same is true of a former roommate who killed himself shortly after moving out of our house. When I think of him, I remember how much of an inconsiderate, jealous, abusive asshole he could be to everyone. When I dream of him, I remember good moments and his generosity when I suddenly needed a new place after unexpectedly becoming homeless. Those moments of generosity were sparingly few and it wasn’t him who extended the helping hand when I was down. In contrast to the welcome everyone else gave me, he was generally just an ass though I was no extra burden on the house. I moved in one day before another roommate moved out and borrowed an inflatable mattress from him for a week while I worked out how to replace all the things I lost as a minimum wage worker. My meals for the first couple days were not food I had purchased, but I didn’t ask to be included in their dinners or to be supported that way, only a room to rent. I was never late on rent. I was a quiet roommate and contributed to keeping up the place and doing dishes for everyone when they had included me in their meals. He treated me as an inferior the entire time we lived together because he made decent money and thought I was weak for making so little and needing a hand when I was at my lowest. I have nothing good to say about him, but my dreams still think of him fondly.
I’d say my dreams are utopian or idealistic, but they’re normally incoherent or nightmares. Brains and how they handle memories are weird.