Looking out the window of the downstairs bathroom in Jackson, I see a Snowshoe Hare hop up into the driveway. The rabbit is mottled gray and white as if it is changing from its summer coat into winter. I call up to Darchelle who is in the upstairs bathroom and point it out. Outside now, I look onto the front porch and see the hare standing stiffly erect, like a gray statue, in front of the front door. A young man dressed in brown picks up the rabbit statue and carries it around to the old screen porch on the side of the house. Feeling somehow responsible for the young man, I walk into the kitchen with him and try to find him something to eat. The kitchen is crowded with people who are busy preparing for a party or something like that. To explain to them why I brought the young man into the house, I tell no one in particular that perhaps would like some granola.

I am in another room now, perhaps a kitchen but not in the house in Jackson. On the far side of the room Alison is sitting and talking with her older sister. She looks uncharacteristically sad or depressed, though I am not sure about that so I ask the person who is with me, who may be Darchelle, what she thinks.

I am upstairs now in the hallway outside Mom and John's bathroom. Donna and Diana are there, and perhaps Stacy or Alison as well. They are busy and don't seem to notice me so I say to Diana, "Give us a hug!"

My memory of this dream is incomplete; I have forgotten what occurred between the several scenes and I am not even sure that the final scene as part of the same dream. When I woke up I had no idea what it might mean so I did not put much effort into remembering it. In the morning though, the meaning of what I could remember seemed pretty clear, and talking it over later with Darchelle gave me additional insights.

The molting Snowshoe Hare symbolizes my transition from living to dying, and its transformation into a statue represents my paralysis and the loss of agency which that entails. As Darchelle noted, a bathroom is a private place. In the dream, our respective and separate bathrooms represent our internal worlds; it is not clear that my attempt to share with her my view of the molting rabbit - my experience of living with the prospect of dying - is successful. If the statue of the rabbit represents my loss of agency - my inability to control either my environment or my activities - then the young man in brown likely represents me attempting to cope with that loss of agency. The crowd in the kitchen preparing for a party represents the people in my life who are not dying and with whom I, like the young man in brown, do not fit in. Given my need to take care of that young man, it is ironic that I offer him granola, a food which in my current physical condition is particularly difficult to eat. My doing so may reflect that our efforts to continue to live a normal life are not working very well.

Am I sad about that? I don't know; in the dream I project that possible sadness and/or depression onto Ali so that I do not have to cope with it. My uncharacteristically jocular request for a hug from Diana may reflect a similar dismissal of my true feelings and desire to not be alone in my experience.