Old Roommate dream

I usually don't dream about people I actually know -- usually they're generic people, or occassionally, famous people. But, last night I had a dream featuring myself and Old Roommate.

As I think I mentioned, I was recently back in Seattle for a whirlwind one-and-a-half weeks, to help clear out my grandpa's house (he'd decided to move an assisted-living pace). The house -- which my grandpa, with the assistance of his father and father-in-law, build hiimself back before WWII -- is in the process of being sold.

In my dream, neither Old Roommate nor myself had met our partners yet. Not sure if it took place in current time, or whether it was back when we were indeed roommates. In my dream, he had just recently (a week or two?) moved into my grandparents' house, as a renter, while my grandpa decided whether to sell, or rent out, the house.

I stopped by, and proposed that he and I jointly rent the place and be roommates. It would split the rent, and there was plenty of room for both of us: Either I could have the two attic bedrooms, and he could have the two main floor bedrooms, or else we could each have a main floor bedroom and each use an attic bedroom as an office (or whatever). Plus, the basement was already set up as a workshop: handy!

He seemed amenable to the idea. While he mulled it over, I wandered around the house, seeing what my grandparents' place looked like with Old Roommate's furniture in it. I noted that some of my grandparents' furniture remained -- perhaps because my dad and his sibs hadn't had a chance to remove them, and had made keeping them there part of the rental deal.

I went through the kitchen to get to the stairs to the attic, to see if Old Roommate had put any of his furniture in the attic bedrooms. As I went up those stairs, I noticed that even though my grandma had died many years ago, the kitchen -- and the stair from the kitchen -- still smelled like her rye bread. Upstairs, the place smelled like cedar.


That's it.

Maybe some symbolism there, about regret that the family isn't keeping the house in the family. But unfortunately, everyone either lives too far out of town, or already has their own house.


--GG