I was walking around a grocery store, and a lot of people who I knew were also there.
This wasn’t your typical store with just aisles upon aisles of products, though. It was unclear why, but it was more like a giant mansion that just happened to be used for selling food and whatnot. There were lots of big, sprawling staircases and elegant hallways, and even some hidden passages that I was exploring.
At one point I think I was being chased by someone and I used one of the passages to get away, but the mansion store remained calm the entire time like it was no big deal.
Eventually I ran into a close friend of mine – we’ll call him Simon, just to avoid any awkwardness by association – and we walked around the store for a while together, in particular looking for some cinnamon rolls that he was supposed to be finding for his girlfriend.
After finding the rolls, I decided to stick around until he met up with her, and we searched and searched and searched throughout the store, but she was nowhere to be found. As we kept walking and looking, a strange sense of sympathy came over me, and eventually we stopped and I sat him down to talk. I asked him if he had really brought his girlfriend, Anne, with him to the store, and he shook his head no with a very straight, pale face.
The dream ended with me comforting him as I woke up, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the next piece of the story was … was my friend going through Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember that he had come to the store alone, or perhaps she had actually died and he was having trouble letting her go. It was a very sad, heavyhearted feeling to know that all I could really do for my friend was be there, but that’s what I did.