I should tell this story more often:  March 29, I awoke at about 1 a.m., in a very lucid dream.  Someone, some deep inner voice, was saying to me, “You are about to meet a Self you never knew existed.”  There was an urgent tangibility to the voice’s wisdom; it was a declaration of simplest truth.   Acquiescing whole heartedly to this pre-dawn epiphany, I lay listening to the companionable stillness of my room, and fell back asleep.

I know now that was our last moment together, when – slipping out of her shell – she summoned one more, soft out-breath, to lift me up as well.