And then the dream was done

I had a dream the other night in which our old dog, Shadow, visited me.  We were lying in tall green grass on a sunny hillside in the mountains, the three of us, my wife, my daughter, and I, and Shadow nosed-up quietly from somewhere behind me, as she was prone to do, and gently stuck her snout in my hand, as she was similarly prone to do.  I saw her vibrant blue-black coat and the so-familiar gleam in her deep-brown eyes, and I knew, in my dream, that she was an apparition, the spirit of our dog, come in this dream to greet me.  I stroked her ears, still as soft as velvet, and the broad furry patch of her scalp between them, and she grunted quietly. Content, as always.

And then the dream was done.

When I awoke, I told my wife about my dream.  "I had almost the same dream," she said.  "About Shadow.  That she'd come to visit us.  She was happy."

I've never been one to put much stock in dreams, except to give credit to the joy that comes, at times, from good, lucid dreaming.   But this?  What is this?  It is a strange thing, indeed, and it has caused us to wonder.  And to be glad.  Glad that we have been visited by a happy, healthy vision of our good old dog, both of us, in our own dreams, but on the very same night.