My Night with Anna Nicole

I am not making this up; I give you my word. I dreamed last week that I was standing in line to see the body of Anna Nicole Smith.
I was on the second floor of a building — does the Rio Grande Firehall have a second floor? — and there was a huge crowd. My wife was with me.
The glass-topped coffin was on a stand or something so it was waist high.
Just before one got to the coffin, there was a large notebook on which the viewers could write a comment, like “Love you Anna Nicole.” My wife wrote something, but I couldn’t see what. I didn’t.
I was there as a reporter but I didn’t have a reporter’s notebook, just a tiny piece of paper folded over and a little stump of a pencil with a very thick point so I could hardly read what I was writing at the time, let alone later.
Just as I got to the coffin, the crowd surged and I and those around me were forced up against it and I envisioned the glass breaking and being impaled on it,
Wouldn’t that be a story? I thought: Reporter killed while viewing Anna Nicole Smith.
But it didn’t happen.
There was just a skeleton in the coffin and, writing this a few hours later, I remember that the previous night I had watched the bones-filled TV program “Bones.” At least part of the reason for the dream was revealed.
After passing by the coffin, there was a table of baked goods for sale, but they were all in opaque bags and one couldn’t tell what they contained. It occurred to me that this was a fund-raiser.
I believe I woke, and I believe I fell back asleep and the dream resumed, something that does happen with me occasionally.
In my dream, it was the next morning —early, dark, pre-dawn — and the coffin and I and maybe a hundred persons were outside — I had a feeling it was on Route 9 in Court House — and we were there to see the coffin taken away.
I was still a reporter with the same slip of paper and useless pencil and trying to find and interview whoever had spent the night with the coffin. No one seemed to be in charge, but someone told me “Harry from Public Works” did. I couldn’t find anyone by that name.
Then one young man improbably lifted the coffin up on his shoulder as if it were very light and walked away with it and I felt terribly sad.
I repeat, I honestly dreamed this and, as I type, all sorts of interpretations come to me including my own illness, Easter approaching, whatever.
If you want to comment on this — do you dream, do you believe they mean something, can you figure out mine? — just click on the comments button. It would be great if a psychologist or psychiatrist chimed in. But don’t send me a bill.
I’ll be offering new comments as events or ideas occur all week plus a “significant” blog sometime before noon on Saturday, April 14.