Judge and jury

"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."
-Cicero
(spoken by Reid in "Fear and Loathing," 2x16, Criminal Minds)

This quote holds a peculiar meaning for me right now.

I've been plagued by some strange dreams for the past several days. Not too many details right now, because...well, I'm considering merging a couple of them together and writing a short story and hoping it'll help me make sense of them and reconcile what's going on in my life with what's going on in my head [when I'm asleep]. I don't know if it will actually work, or if I'll be able to do this idea justice.

My grandfather is having (suffering from? Is it suffering?) rare, very brief moments of potential lucidity, but I'm not sure whether that's actually what it is. More on this later, because while Linden helped me talk this out and sort it out yesterday, it's late at night and therefore currently jumbled in my brain again. (This is in real life).

My paternal grandmother figures prominently in one of these dreams, serving as a courtroom's equivalent of an announcer (there is a more precise term that I can't think of right now), reading a list of grievances everyone I have ever known in my life holds against me. It was quite a bit more involved than that, and very disorienting, but that image has been haunting me, that and the whirlpool of associated feelings -- associated with the other contents of the dream just as much as with my grandmother.

And then last night I was in a high-speed car chase conspicuously lacking in, you know, chasers. My sister was a foot shorter than her current height (and potentially younger?) trying to drive, which was all kinds of disastrous, and would have been amusing if she weren't constantly swerving into other lanes on a packed, yet empty, highway (I know, confusing, but it's a dream and doesn't make sense). And then she suddenly switched places with my dad (suddenly really means instantaneously) and was in the backseat with me. And there was a loud gunshot, except no one/no car is behind us, and there's no bullet, just a bullet hole, which is nowhere close to us and yet in the car seat right next to us. And for some reason this was not remotely alarming at the time. Say what? And suddenly I'm back in the courtroom before I spring awake because I can't handle that dream again.

I wonder what my mind has in store for me tonight.