Protective Grandmother

My ex-girlfriend and I used to go to a Thai restaurant on the other end of town every now and again (we went maybe three times during the course of our 1.5 year relationship). She had two relatives buried nearby; her grandmother (whom she missed terribly) and her father (whom she regretted having not known very well).

Whenever we went to this Thai place we would always drive over to the cemetery and visit their graves. To be honest, it was more boring than anything to me at the time. I mean, I didn't act bored but I might have joked around a bit as that's in my nature, though I was certainly never disrespectful. However, her grandmother's headstone was the type that had a little oval photograph of the deceased built into it. It never really 'scared' me but she and her grandmother did bare a striking resemblance to one another, so it was a little off-putting.

Our relationship wasn't the greatest, but she had a son (8 years old) who was about the same age as my little brothers were when I had left home at 18. He and I had formed a pretty tight bond, so despite the fact that her and I really weren't a great match we stayed together longer than we probably would have otherwise.

One night, when we were asleep in her apartment, I had this weird "dream". I put dream in quotation marks because normally when I dream (which is quite often, almost every night) there are a lot of images or some kind of plot-line -- bizarre as they may sometimes be. This dream was different in that I was more aware of myself. And I somehow gained the realization that since my mind was in this sleep state I could communicate with the dead.

Once I had gained this realization, I heard a woman's voice. I don't remember exactly what it said but it was something along the lines of, "You had better take good care of (insert ex-girlfriend's name)." It was not what the voice said, so much as the tone. It was very stern and cold sounding.

I immediately woke up from the dream and opened my eyes to see the figure of a woman standing in one corner of the room. The image stayed for several seconds before slowly fading away. Now, I know it is very easy to dismiss this as a dream -- and maybe that's all it was. But it really felt like more than that at the time (three years ago) and still does now.

She and I parted ways a couple months after that simply because we were not a good fit for one another and we knew it; somehow I think her grandmother knew it too!