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Description
For the past week or so, I can't seem to keep good track of time anymore, I've been having this same dream:  I am in a sterile room much like a hospital room or a nursing home room, I awake and get my slippers on, and then go to a waiting area and sit there.  That's it.  I just wait and wait and wait, and carry on a conversation or two with other waiters, and then wake up.  It is bizarre and makes no sense to me at all.  For days I had been haunted by this place... a room unlike any I had been in before, but familiar.
As I write this story I find myself growing tired again, I think it is because I am not resting...I am too busy trying to figure out my dream in my sleep and I don't rest.  I wake up tired, my body aches.  If it weren't for the fact that I otherwise feel fine I would think I have the flu.  I keep running into things, somebody in the house keeps moving the furniture around on me and I don't think that is funny, at all.  I'm tired, irritable and I want a nap.
I curl up on the couch, cover in an old wool plaid blanket, and the cat curls up against my belly and begins to purr.  The two kittens curl up behind my bent knees and go to sleep.  I drift off to the sound of their gentle purring. My daughter calls to me but I tell her to leave me alone, I'm trying to sleep.  What I'm really trying to do is get back to the unsolved dream.  I wait and I wait, feeling my lids grow heavier, impatient for the sleep to start.
Suddenly I awaken to my daughter's cries.  I'm in that room again!  The sun is shining brightly, and everything is clean and sterile, and not at all like my own room, but because I have been here so many times, it is beginning to feel like my room.  My daughter, no,wait, it is not my daughter but someone whom I trust, comes in and helps me out of bed to lead me to the waiting room.  It is even smaller in there today, more cramped, more people.  I don't know a lot of these people, but there are a few familiar faces from before.  The voices in the room all blend together into a cacaphony that I can't really decipher.  I tell her I've forgotten something in my room, but she reminds me I'll lose my place in line.  In line?  There is no line?  She tells me it is first come first served. I argue with her "How can that be?  Some of these people were here yesterday?  They should have been gone by now?"
She answers politely but warmly "Like you, they left, they weren't ready to go in, so they came back today, ahead of you."
I am so tired, I can feel my joints ache. I can feel soreness in my muscles.  It is so much like the flu.  I keep telling myself I hope this is the doctor.  THen I notice there is a string in my teeth, and my teeth are sore.  No, I must be at the dentist, I say to myself. I complain to the girl/daughter that my tooth hurts on the right side and there is a string stuck in there.  She tells me to pull it out.  I do, and as I do I feel my rear molar release from the gum and I panick.  "NO!  I don't want to lose any of my teeth!"
She pats my arm and says to me "Just pull it out, it's ok."
I look at her like she is crazy but the tooth is so loose I just have to pull it out.  As I remove the tooth, it is like the entire upper palate of my mouth comes out with it, only as it does I see that it is clear like cartilage.  I hold it in my hand and realize with horror that it is the shell of a child's skull, and that the tooth that I lost was attached to it.  I scream.
"OH MY GOD! What is this thing?"  I hold it out to the girl.
"You know what it is.  It is your youth. Your infancy."
I look at her incredulously, as though she has lost her mind.  Then I remember, yes, I remember.  I am in a dream.  Ok, time to wake up.  I've solved the puzzle.
"No, I'm afraid you can't wake up right now," she says sweetly.
"Why?  Is there more to solve?"
"Well, " says she, "you haven't gone in the door yet?"
Just then I realize I see people moving away from the door, they look afraid.  I start to become afraid.  I don't think I want to solve this dream anymore.
I throw the baby skull thing away from me and it splinters upon the wall.  I get up and start walking in the direction of the room that I usually sleep in.  Wait, the room I usually wake up in.  I'm feeling more and more confused. This all seems so real, so much color, so much noise, the smells are so disinfectant like.  The room is there, but I can't go back in the door.  I'm stuck in a time warp it seems.  I turn around, realizing the dream is not going to let me go.
I walk slowly toward the hand that reaches through the door and calls my name silently.  How did I hear it?  It was in my head.  I cry to my daughter/girl "I'm sorry, I guess I have to go now" and I walk through the door.

POSTSCRIPT:
I found this story in my mother's top dresser drawer at the nursing home where she had been staying since her descent into Alzheimer's Disease.  Since she died I had to clear out her things.  Many things didn't make sense to me about her concept of reality toward the end.  I couldn't understand when I was with her why she kept insisting she was going to wake up soon and it was all a dream.  It made me wonder if perhaps my own reality was not what I knew of it.  She seemed certain she didn't belong there.  Maybe she didn't.

Description
For the past week or so, I can't seem to keep good track of time anymore, I've been having this same dream:  I am in a sterile room much like a hospital room or a nursing home room, I awake and get my slippers on, and then go to a waiting area and sit there.  That's it.  I just wait and wait and wait, and carry on a conversation or two with other waiters, and then wake up.  It is bizarre and makes no sense to me at all.  For days I had been haunted by this place... a room unlike any I had been in before, but familiar.
As I write this story I find myself growing tired again, I think it is because I am not resting...I am too busy trying to figure out my dream in my sleep and I don't rest.  I wake up tired, my body aches.  If it weren't for the fact that I otherwise feel fine I would think I have the flu.  I keep running into things, somebody in the house keeps moving the furniture around on me and I don't think that is funny, at all.  I'm tired, irritable and I want a nap.
I curl up on the couch, cover in an old wool plaid blanket, and the cat curls up against my belly and begins to purr.  The two kittens curl up behind my bent knees and go to sleep.  I drift off to the sound of their gentle purring. My daughter calls to me but I tell her to leave me alone, I'm trying to sleep.  What I'm really trying to do is get back to the unsolved dream.  I wait and I wait, feeling my lids grow heavier, impatient for the sleep to start.
Suddenly I awaken to my daughter's cries.  I'm in that room again!  The sun is shining brightly, and everything is clean and sterile, and not at all like my own room, but because I have been here so many times, it is beginning to feel like my room.  My daughter, no,wait, it is not my daughter but someone whom I trust, comes in and helps me out of bed to lead me to the waiting room.  It is even smaller in there today, more cramped, more people.  I don't know a lot of these people, but there are a few familiar faces from before.  The voices in the room all blend together into a cacaphony that I can't really decipher.  I tell her I've forgotten something in my room, but she reminds me I'll lose my place in line.  In line?  There is no line?  She tells me it is first come first served. I argue with her "How can that be?  Some of these people were here yesterday?  They should have been gone by now?"
She answers politely but warmly "Like you, they left, they weren't ready to go in, so they came back today, ahead of you."
I am so tired, I can feel my joints ache. I can feel soreness in my muscles.  It is so much like the flu.  I keep telling myself I hope this is the doctor.  THen I notice there is a string in my teeth, and my teeth are sore.  No, I must be at the dentist, I say to myself. I complain to the girl/daughter that my tooth hurts on the right side and there is a string stuck in there.  She tells me to pull it out.  I do, and as I do I feel my rear molar release from the gum and I panick.  "NO!  I don't want to lose any of my teeth!"
She pats my arm and says to me "Just pull it out, it's ok."
I look at her like she is crazy but the tooth is so loose I just have to pull it out.  As I remove the tooth, it is like the entire upper palate of my mouth comes out with it, only as it does I see that it is clear like cartilage.  I hold it in my hand and realize with horror that it is the shell of a child's skull, and that the tooth that I lost was attached to it.  I scream.
"OH MY GOD! What is this thing?"  I hold it out to the girl.
"You know what it is.  It is your youth. Your infancy."
I look at her incredulously, as though she has lost her mind.  Then I remember, yes, I remember.  I am in a dream.  Ok, time to wake up.  I've solved the puzzle.
"No, I'm afraid you can't wake up right now," she says sweetly.
"Why?  Is there more to solve?"
"Well, " says she, "you haven't gone in the door yet?"
Just then I realize I see people moving away from the door, they look afraid.  I start to become afraid.  I don't think I want to solve this dream anymore.
I throw the baby skull thing away from me and it splinters upon the wall.  I get up and start walking in the direction of the room that I usually sleep in.  Wait, the room I usually wake up in.  I'm feeling more and more confused. This all seems so real, so much color, so much noise, the smells are so disinfectant like.  The room is there, but I can't go back in the door.  I'm stuck in a time warp it seems.  I turn around, realizing the dream is not going to let me go.
I walk slowly toward the hand that reaches through the door and calls my name silently.  How did I hear it?  It was in my head.  I cry to my daughter/girl "I'm sorry, I guess I have to go now" and I walk through the door.

POSTSCRIPT:
I found this story in my mother's top dresser drawer at the nursing home where she had been staying since her descent into Alzheimer's Disease.  Since she died I had to clear out her things.  Many things didn't make sense to me about her concept of reality toward the end.  I couldn't understand when I was with her why she kept insisting she was going to wake up soon and it was all a dream.  It made me wonder if perhaps my own reality was not what I knew of it.  She seemed certain she didn't belong there.  Maybe she didn't.