(Male) This part really happened: A teacher I had maybe ten years ago had a daughter a couple years younger than me. I don’t remember ever having a conversation with her. The difference between our ages always seemed so big at the time. Last month, his daughter died after a lengthy illness.
But after she’d died, I had a dream where she and I were both in this dark room. Just outside the door in a lighted space there were people who we both knew. We stood very close to each other for quite awhile, wordlessly standing, not exactly waiting, just sort of “being.” Finally I spoke, “I never really knew you.” Then she said entirely without inflection “Now I’m dead.” I nodded but since we were in the dark, she wouldn’t have been able to see. I didn’t know if her words supposed to mean that I was dead too, or that since she was dead that therefore we’d be able to get to know each other or whether, perhaps, her words really weren’t replying to me at all. I could hear a commotion coming from the people in the lighted space but none of their words were distinct enough to make out. We stood there, in the dark, face to face, until I woke up.
His daughter who