I just woke up from a dream that was so beautiful. So nourishing, so cherishing — until the very last scene.

It was, by my standards, a longish dream, but the fragments are dissipating quickly. Many people appeared from my family. And multiple “time zones” (as in eras).

As is so often the case in dreams, I was somewhere I knew in the dream, but don’t know in waking life. With Megan, who had been celebrating a birthday. Not quite the age she is today, but not far off. Medjool was somewhere around too. I’d been unwittingly 30 minutes late to the birthday preparations because I hadn’t received an SMS from one of Megan’s friends asking me to come sooner, and I was deeply sorry that I had not been there on time.

At some stage I was mothering in all directions. My own mother had dropped her breakfast tray and her cereal had spilled all of its milky sludge over the kitchen floor. Megan, suddenly younger, wanted to help tidy up, but my mother was impatiently trying to shoo her away. I tried to take over while also keeping Megan’s feet out of the sloppy mess. My mother was kneeling down, trying to wipe everything up. It felt exactly like the mess it was. My sense is that we were all ten to fifteen years younger than we currently are.

That scene switched to us being outside in a beautiful and rather grandiose garden. It was chilly and misty. I was spooning Megan for a while, curled around her on a wide wall, comforting her for a reason that is no longer clear. It was still her birthday, but she was now much younger. It was a beautiful feeling. Just lying there, wrapped around her, stroking her hair. Comforting her and being comforted by her warmth.

The scene switched again to us being in London — Megan, Medjool and me, but also Julia. We had to get a Hammersmith & City line tube but needed to know which one so that we were on the right branch to get our connection for a bus. The tube arrived, and we still didn’t know whether it was the right one. We’d missed seeing the destination on the front of the tube, and the platform was so busy with people that we couldn’t see the indicators. It was a moment of mild anxiety and pressure.

Medjool managed to check the panels along the platform walls that display the routes and said, “Yes — this one”. We scrambled to get on, all of us, nearly splitting into different carriages, but finally being together. Or so I thought. I could see Megan and Medjool, but no Julia.

Suddenly on the bus now, we are all four of us together again. Where are we all going? It transpires that Julia is going to school, which she doesn’t want to, and needs to get off at a stop before the rest of us. She is about eleven or twelve in the dream. Megan is sitting happily nearby, asking me to guess which concert she is going to for her birthday. It is not difficult for me to guess. I know it’s Supertramp. Or is it Electric Light Orchestra? One of those two bands, for sure.

It’s a grizzly, drizzly, misty day, still not quite light, and Julia is at the top of the bus steps, about to get off at her stop, but really not happy. She’s starting to fuss about going to school. She wants to be with us for whatever we are all going to be doing together. I am on the inside seat, with someone I don’t know next to me. I can’t easily get out. There is no sign of Medjool anymore. I can’t get to the end of the bus to comfort her.

The bus stops and she doesn’t get out for the longest time. Really starting to fuss now, saying, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go. What’s the point? Why even bother?”

I don’t know if this is “just” adolescent behaviour, a natural wondering about the point of school, or something deeper, and I try to get out of my seat, but it’s too late. Julia has got off the bus and the doors have closed.

I see her little form looking up at me, and I try to discern her crumpled face through the bus’s dirty windows. She’s looking up at me, still crying, still saying, “Mum, what’s the point? Why even bother?”

And in my dream, I realise. I know.

She’s dead. She’s dead.
You know she’s dead.
Julia is dead.
You just get to have her in dreams.
You know this is a dream.
I have lost her.

I start to cry out, “Oh Julia, Julia, my Julia!” and then “I’m only dreaming of you. I know it’s just a dream. I have lost you. You are dead.”

And the “veil” between the dreaming and the waking worlds starts to rip horizontally before my eyes. Thread by thread, like a piece of linen breaking down into strips, thrusting me from one world — the world of dreams — to another one — the world of the waking. The world in which I have lost my baby girl.

I am crying, “I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her,” as I open my eyes.

Still — now wide awake — crying out those words.