Dreams of Queen Elizabeth

       

            I had the very strangest dream last weekend between about 2 and 3 am.  I had a particularly vivid dream in which I was summoned by Queen Elizabeth.   I was permitted to bring my children and my grandchild.  My daughter and her son attended but the others were not able to go.  Even in the dream I thought this was preposterous. I am not a subject of the Queen. Why would she wish to see me, on an urgent matter?  She must have confused me with someone else, I thought.  She does own land adjacent to mine in Canada, perhaps it's related to that, I thought.



             When I arrived, she was in bed with the head of the bed elevated.  My daughter and her little son would visit briefly after I spoke to her, but she seemed to know who I was, and wanted to talk to me.  She was feeling well but believed she would pass shortly and she wanted a chance to ask me to do something for her. What could I possibly do for a sitting monarch ?  "I want you to forgive your mother", she said.   This made just a little more sense.   Until her passing, my mother was a British subject who, despite the fact she married an American and lived a good deal of her life afterward in the US,  kept her citizenship.  My mother had a particular respect for Queen Elizabeth primarily because of her conduct during the second world war.  Both my mother and Queen Elizabeth had been born the same year, and in the same approximate area. When they were young, they truly resembled each other. My mother would have been the taller version of Elizabeth.

I have few pictures of my mother, but this is one of them.

              Queen Elizabeth went on to say that my mother endured sorrows and losses that were both beyond my knowledge and beyond my comprehension, during the war, and that it was actually remarkable that she recovered to the point that she did and went on to live a life.  She went on to say that the most difficult skill in this life, is the task of true forgiveness. "Now that you are a grandmother", she said, "this is a task that you should master."  Rather than discussing the matter with the sitting monarch, I wondered how she knew my mother and why this was important to her.  She said something about her task being the communication of this message, and that she did not need an answer. Then she went on to visit very briefly with my daughter and two year old grandson.  In totality, there was no warmth in our meeting. This was the passing of a message not unlike the passing of a wish she might have had for a small commonwealth nation.

               I awoke with a start. What a vivid yet strange dream. Several days later, I am still recalling it, and wondering if my mother, in fact, during the war, did know Queen Elizabeth.