A Visit from My Departed Professor

I was in my late professor’s apartment. She had a beautiful apartment. My professor taught literature and critical theories. I took classes from her as an undergraduate and graduate student.

My professor died of cancer in 2015. I was at her place as a good friend. I believe we watched Golden Girls episodes together. People came over to her place. I crashed on her couch for a few days.

The most distinct memory I have from this dream was when I sat down to play her piano. I didn’t play it for very long. A few bars. I was drawn to the piano because it reminded me of the one my grandmother had. My grandmother died in 2014.

As I got up to leave the piano, I considered closing the top over the keys, but I stopped myself. I wanted to leave the piano as is, and it wasn’t covered when I came over to play it.

I only remember the living room of my professor’s apartment. I left her place to go take some tests and to go to some classes. I had lost track of time. I was trying to remember my class schedule. Was it the end of the semester?

What do I take on Mondays? Was it American history?

I met with some other students and asked for help to pull up my transcript and also to find my current grades for classes I was in. I told one lady that my math skills had atrophied. I could only do about college algebra, which was about the highest math I ever took anyway.

We looked through my papers, test scores, but I wasn’t getting the real answer I needed: what were the classes I had forgotten to attend and what were classes I was doing so bad in that I needed to drop out of—to protect my GPA.

I stumbled upon a very long paper for an English class, one my professor was in charge of. She had written a stream of margin notes on the paper. Each section was given a score. The end of the paper had the final score, it was an A.

Her handwriting was scrawled everywhere. Different colored pen marks. I had the paper in a giant white binder. It was like she was trying to reach me from beyond the grave.

I remember there being something red and vivid in the dream, but I don’t know what it was. I wandered through hallways and got pretty lost. I was really anxious that I didn’t know my class schedule.

My professor’s apartment was the more stable part of the dream. It was in a pale white theme. The lights were dim. The piano was near a window. A TV was in a corner near the front door. The professor had her same shoulder-length haircut. She still had her sophisticated and witty demeanor. I felt like she had invited me to her place for a cup of tea and some instruction about where to go in life. Perhaps she was burdened by the absurd papers I wrote many years ago.

I don’t recall having dreams about her in the past. She was tall, well-respected, and liked to show pictures of her cats. The cats had to be rehomed after she died. Their names: Basil and Tomato.

The professor likes to do gardening. She smoked cigarettes. She loved poetry and wrote poems about flyover states. She had a deep voice. She could have done voiceovers for documentaries. She had a dry sense of humor. She was also compassionate; a professor who cared about the history of black people. She wanted them to have better lives. Her heart was gold, which is why… if I had a visit from her last night, it was a friendly and worthwhile visit.

I am starting to think the dead visit me in dreams because it happens on a regular basis. Whether my friend who played music with me or my grandparents… my subconscious thinks about my departed loved ones more than my conscious does.