This experience wasn’t a dream but this is the closest thread I can find to post it in. Apologies, this is long and gets into some pretty personal stuff, but it’s stuff that is intrinsic to the story. And we’re all anonymous here.
In August 2013 my brother Paul committed suicide. He’d been suffering very bad depression for most of his adult life and had tried everything to overcome it to no avail. As upset as I was about his suicide I ultimately came to respect his decision as really the only means available to escape his pain. He was a very level-headed and logical man who had clearly thought everything through carefully – the why, how, when, and where, the tying up of all loose ends, providing for his family afterward, etc.
My mother’s relationship with him, with all of us, was difficult. She had been fairly abusive when we were children but later in life had made great efforts to change and somehow make it up to us. She’d always felt some responsibility and remorse for Paul’s precarious psychic health. I don’t believe this feeling is entirely justified as he certainly must have had some brain chemistry issues too – e.g. I had the same upbringing and don’t suffer from depression.
She felt absolutely tortured when he killed himself; she blamed herself.
About six months after his death we were talking about it for the umpteenth time. I let her ramble through her same remorseful narrative over and over. Always ending with: they had been in touch more frequently in the weeks before his death. Then he had called her the night before and spoken to her at great length. It was a wonderful phone call, he had been so loving and warm and had told her how much he loved her, had recounted wonderful memories from the past. She just could not reconcile the "happiness" of that phone call with his suicide less than 12 hours later.
I suddenly had a very clear and strong insight, and told it to her. Paul was planning to kill himself the next day. He could not tell her this. He knew her well enough to know she would blame herself. He could not tell her in so many words not to. The purpose of that phone call, I told her, was to signal to her that he did not hold her responsible for his pain and his suicide and to please not hold herself responsible either. All was forgiven; his actions had nothing to do with her. He wanted to make this clear to her. He did not want her to spend the rest of her life agonizing over it.
I felt profoundly, intuitively that this was his intent in calling her. As I spoke it, my mother got quiet for some minutes, and I could tell that she heard and understood at a deep level that this was the truth. I know this because afterwards, from then on, she did stop blaming herself.
But here’s the other thing that happened: right as I finished saying it, I suddenly had a very distinct and intense impression of Paul being present right next to me, nodding vigorously, smiling, and saying “That’s right! That’s right!” In my mind’s eye I could see and hear him clearly. I could feel his personality. It was very powerful. It lasted just a second. It kind of took my breath away.
Through my adult life I have vacillated between believing/not believing in an afterlife: open to the possibility but not dwelling on it much since it seems to be completely unknowable. I obviously can’t claim that Paul was definitely there, it was a completely subjective experience. But it was so unexpected, unprecedented, un-dreamed of, and so convincing to me at a deep personal level that I have come to the conclusion, gradually, that it was in fact him. It is as though the communication of this information to my mother, through me, was important enough that he made the effort to break through.
I've had no other similar experiences in my life.
So, another subjective fortean anecdote, make of it what you will.