The night before Fidel Castro died I dreamed my grandfather had passed away. My oblivious grandmother was in good spirits and explained the details of the funeral and burial as a distant matter-of-fact. I had to rather deduce what had happened on November 23, while I was away at a tedious left-leaning event. It pained me greatly to have to connect the dots in the midst of her apparent disconnection; his going hadn’t affected her personally. To decipher the dream’s meaning I was told to look-up the significance of a hard-boiled egg. In orthodox Judaism, it’s regarded as a food of mourning. Since the egg is also rounded, it also represents the mystic, endless circle of life and death. Being of a highly superstitious nature (as a logical result of being surrounded by bizarre, illogical phenomenon), I took the dream quite literally and made my mother call her father in Cuba to say one last good-bye...just in case. …
