I have not been sure if I would post this story but now I just feel like this is the correct place for it to be. The reason why I didn't want to post it is partially because it was what I consider to be an intensely personal experience and also one that might make you think I am completely crazy. Because I don't want my experience tainted by others' views of it, no matter what they may be, I have turned off comments on this post.

I think I have mentioned before here that I have never had a peaceful dream about Joe. I had a few dreams a long time ago, and they were unsettling. Weird stuff and just generally not good dreams. I also do not have that feeling that "he is with me" that so many people talk about. No, to the contrary, if anything I have felt that he is definitely not with me.

On New Year's Eve morning my kids woke me up about 8 when they walked by my bedroom on their way downstairs. I talked to them for a few minutes, as I always do when they first wake up, but on this day I went back to sleep.

I had this weird thing happen, I'm not sure if it was a dream or what. It was definitely not like any dream I have ever had before. When I think of it I don't really consider it a dream, more of an "experience". I will, however, refer to it as a 'dream' below for descriptive purposes.

I was what you would probably describe as half-asleep. I was sleeping but I could hear Alyssa talking every now and then downstairs. I felt like a very vivid scene was unfolding in front of my eyes at the same time.

In this scene I was in a room that I thought was my kitchen. Across the room I saw a wooden window and the top half of it was completely crooked. "WOW" I thought as I walked toward it, feeling more amazed by how it was hanging there than wondering how it got like that. As I approached it and touched it to set it back in place, all of a sudden I had this gigantically huge rush of energy envelop my body. It was like facing into a gigantic hurricane-force wind but instead of feeling violent and breathless it was incredible peaceful and comforting. It felt like love, exponentially magnified. As this wind rushed by and through me, a curtain (that appeared suddenly near the window) wrapped completely around me. I can't really describe how my body felt. The only way I can think to describe it would be like having goosebumps times one million (next time you get goosebumps imagine it times one million). While I stood there in this state, every part of me thought that this energy was Joe. It was like for the first time since he died I could actually feel his love for me in a real, physical, undeniable way, and HE was showing me.

I stood there not wanting the feeling to end and I heard my own voice half-crying say "I love you" and soon after that I was aware that I was back to reality, back in my bedroom. My body was tingly all over, like a regular case of goosebumps but all over. I laid there for a while, completely in awe of what had just happened.

It's hard for me to describe it in words and the way I described it above seems pitifully unworthy of the experience. Every time I have thought about it in the past three weeks it brings tears to my eyes because it was so powerful. I would consider myself a skeptical person when it comes to some things. I can find a concrete explanation for just about anything. I tend to lean towards that way of thinking other than constantly believing that, for example, every flick of a light is a "sign". I don't look down on that way of thinking, I just have a hard time making myself truly believe in things like that. I cannot, however, explain my experience that morning. When I think of it as "just a dream" something inside me says that's not right.

Whatever it was, it was meaningful to me, and in the end, that's all that matters.