To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

-William Shakespeare


Bill said he couldn’t wait to tell me about his dream from the other night.
It started he said, inside his parent’s house in Queens, where he grew up,
and where he still visits his mother every few weeks. The first thing Bill noticed
in his dream was that the interior was bigger, about twice the size he knows it
to be. He found himself sitting in the living room, on a couch next to his father.

Immediately he saw that his father was very young, in his
early forties. "That’s odd," he thought. He looked around the
room and saw that he was with his mother and brother as well,
although they were on the other side of this now very wide room.

Checking himself over, he understood that he had not changed:
still in his early fifties, still wearing a beard. One thing
was definitely out of place and he felt compelled to tell his
father about it.

Turning to his father, he cupped his hand around his mouth and
whispered, so that his mother and brother would not hear...

"Dad," he whispered, " You’re dead. You died in 1993. And actually,
Dad, I almost died as well, when I had that cardiac event in 1995.
This is just a dream you know."

His father looked at him. Then he stood up and began to
walk out of the room. As he approached the kitchen door, Bill’s
father turned to him and said "Yes Bill, but whose dream is it?"